Some RAW officials might have been in touch with Tarique
New Age - August 30, 2015
The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, is said to have told her cabinet in the past week that some officials of India’s external intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing had a ‘close link’ with BNP senior vice-chairman Tarique Rahman, whom she blamed for the August 21, 2004 grenade attack on an Awami League rally.
She told the cabinet meeting on August 24 that those RAW officials had maintained contacts at the family-level of Tarique and attended a birthday party of his daughter, several ministers said preferring anonymity.
According to them, in an informal discussion, Hasina, also the ruling Awami League president, alleged that several meetings were held in Hawa Bhaban, then controlled by Tarique, to carry out the plan for the grenade attack on the AL rally that left 24 people killed and many injured.
‘Several efforts were made overtly and covertly to kill me,’ she was quoted by a minister to have said.
The prime minister deplored the role of a number of senior AL leaders, some of whom were present at the meeting, after the military-controlled interim regime of Fakhruddin Ahmed took over on January 11, 2007, the ministers said.
‘You were involved in the conspiracy to expel me from the party and the country as well,’ Hasina was
quoted by a minister to have said.
‘Some of my senior leaders during the time were in contact with RAW to minus me from the party…These things are still fresh in my memory,’ he quoted Hasina as saying.
According to the ministers, Hasina concluded the unscheduled talk with the remark, ‘maybe I can forgive, but never forget.’
They said that several ministers looked embarrassed and their faces turned pale as the prime minister suddenly picked the ‘minus-two’ formula for discussion and took a swipe at the ‘reformists’ who were active at the time when Hasina and BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia were detained and there was a reported move by the interim regime to send them abroad.
Some RAW officials might have been in touch with Tarique | New Age