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BNP leaders planned to kill people!

Shakhawat Liton
BNP leaders Moudud Ahmed, M.K. Anwar, Rafiqul Islam Mia, Abdul Awami Mintoo and Shimul Biswas have been languishing in jail since November 8. They were also placed on an eight day remand by a Dhaka court in two cases on November 14 allowing police to quiz them intensively to know about plans to "carry out subversive activities and kill people."
What offences did they commit?
For that let's go briefly through the remand prayer forwarded by the police to a magistrate court seeking permission to take the detained BNP leaders on remand.
According to the police remand prayer, as per the plans of the five detained BNP leaders, other accused activists in the case along with other 80-90 unidentified people, came out of the AGB Colony Hospital Zone around 12:15 noon and brought out a procession on September 24 protesting the submission of charge sheet against Jatiyatabadi Chhattara Dal's central president and other leaders in connection with a case filed for throwing crude bombs at the information minister's residence. In order to create panic, the police remand prayer stated, they blocked the road in front of Ideal School and College and vandalised seven vehicles. They beat up the drivers and hurled brick chips with the aim of killing them.
According to the remand prayer, as the plaintiff came to the spot after hearing the sound of blasts, the accused barred the police from discharging their duties and attacked them suddenly before fleeing. "It is learnt from the information of the investigation officer that the accused mentioned in the FIR carried out the attack as per their (the five detained BNP leaders) plan. Further evidence
and proof to this end are being gathered," claimed the police in its prayer.
According to the police's remand prayer in the other case, with the plans and directives of the five detained BNP leaders, the FIR named accused along with 80-90 activists of 18-party alliance on November 5 brought out a brisk procession suddenly from Kamalapur bazar area with the view to creating panic. They blocked the road and as the plaintiff with his force tried to calm them down the rowdy mob barred the police and attacked them with 3-4 crude bombs, leaving several policemen injured. And, as the remand prayer submitted, adequate evidence and proof are being collected that the accused in the FI R and unnamed others perpetrated the attacks.
Both the remand prayers claimed that it was necessary to quiz the five BNP leaders to find out the source of the explosives and their stock and supply. According to the remand prayer it was also important to know what plan the 18-party alliance activists had chalked out with the directives, plan and instigation of the accused. It further said that the five detained leaders termed the government illegal and provoked the government employees not to obey law through their statements and talk show comments and in rallies. The prayer submission also said: "Moreover, it is also necessary to quiz them to know what plans they chalked out to carry out sabotage, damage public and private property and to kill people."
The charges against the five BNP leaders are really interesting.
Moudud, 73, who was deputy prime minister, prime minister, vice-president and also law justice and parliamentary'affairs minister, is now a member of BNP national standingcommittee, the highest policymaking body. His colleague Anwar, 81, a member of the standing committee, was cabinet secretary and minister in the past BNP government. Mintoo, 65, an advisor of the BNP chairperson, is one of the country's top businessmen. But according to the police remand prayers, they were engaged in plans to "carry out subversive activities and kill people." How funny!
Since 2012, dozens of BNP senior leaders have been detained and put behind bars for months. They all came out later on bail. There were some cases which were also ridiculous in nature. Take the one of garbage truck vandalism case.
According to the case statement, on the evening of December 9,2012, BNP acting Secretary'General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and his party colleague Ruhul Kabir Rizvi led a procession of around 200 to 250 unnamed people armed with sticks that morning. They stopped a Dhaka Gity Corporation vehicle and forced its driver, Ainal, to get down. The accused then beat the driver mercilessly in an attempt to kill him.
The police did not take time to arrest Fakhrul. They did not need to look for the other unnamed accused either. They arrested Fakhrul on the evening of December 10 as he was leaving his Nayapaltan party office.
Fakhrul was first arrested on May 15, 2012 and was charged with planning and provoking the torching of a vehicle on April 29, 2012 in front of Falcon Tower, near the Prime Minister's Office. Party' standing committee members M.K. Anwar, Brig Gen (retd) Hannan Shah and Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, too, were sued over similar charges.
According to the charge sheet of that case, two BNP standing committee members, Mirza Abbas and Goyeshwar Chandra Roy, two BNP lawmakers Shahiduddin Chowdhury Anne and Mahbubuddin Khokon and Bangladesh Jatiya Party chief and its lone lawmaker barrister Andaleeb Rahman Partho, went there along with others around 9 pm on April 29 to torch the bus.
All these cases are glaring examples of narrow and sullied politics. These have also exposed the government's political bankruptcy. They mock at the ruling Awami League's electoral pledges, made before 2008 parliamentary' polls, that it would inculcate tolerance and decency in the country's political culture.
The government has been nakedly using the law enforcing agencies against the opposition for narrow partisan gains. And the way the senior opposition leaders have been put behind the bars, and bail being denied by the lower courts, create misgivings about our legal system.
This practice will also keep widening the existing gap and animosity between the ruling and opposition camps, making it impossible to reach a consensus on any national issues, including the next general election.
The writer is Senior Reporter, The Daily Star.