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NEWS ANALYSIS

Rule of law or vengeance?

Shakhawat Liton
The police let their imagination run wild to implicate almost all of BNP's senior leaders along with their junior ones in a large number of cases in connection with political violence during the last two years.
These senior BNP leaders allegedly torched and vandalised vehicles, blasted crude bombs and threw brickbats at law enforcers during street agitations against the Awami League-led government in 2012 and 2013.
Along with the big leaders, the police were also meticulously bent on implicating a huge number of mid- and field level opposition men in those cases.
The wholesale manner in which the police, having been directed by government high-ups, went after senior BNP leaders is a glaring example of how this law enforcement agency abuses its power blatantly in the interest of narrow partisan politics.
Let us look at a few instances.
According to police description, Moudud Ahmed, MK Anwar, Rafiqul Islam Mia and Abdul Awal Minto along with some other opposition men vandalised vehicles, beat up bus drivers and hurled brick chips at them in an attempt to kill them. They indulged in all these rowdy activities on the city streets in broad daylight on September 24 last year in Motijheel.
Moudud was 73, Anwar 81, Rafiqul 71 and Minto 65, according to the police report, when they carried out those disruptive activities. Does it not show their extraordinary physical fitness? They, however, landed in jail on November 8.
Police further imagined that the BNP leaders had planned to carry out subversive activities and to kill people. So they each were placed on an eightday remand by a Dhaka court on November 14 in two cases filed in connection with hartal violence. Later, they were released on bail. The cases are now under investigation.
According to the charge sheet submitted by police in another case, some BNP senior leaders, including MK Anwar, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, Brig Gen (retd) Hannan Shah and Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, had made plans to torch a bus at a meeting with other party leaders.
The party's senior leaders Mirza Abbas, Goyeshwar Chandra Roy and some other opposition men executed the plan on April 29, 2012 in front of Falcon Tower, near the Prime Minister's Office at around 9:00pm. Consequently, the senior leaders were incarcerated in May 2012 in connection with an arson case. They are now facing charges of arson.
According to another charge sheet submitted by police in another arson case, Moudud, Mirza Abbas, Goyeshwar Roy and many mid-level leaders and activists of BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami, vandalised a private car and set it ablaze in front of BNP's Naya Paltan office in the capital on March 6 last year.
It was also claimed in the charge sheet that BNP men threw crude bombs and brickbats at law enforcers as the latter tried to pacify them. A Dhaka court on September 2 framed charges against them.
Now take another example of a conspiracy case.
Fakhrul, Hannan, Mosharraf, LDP chief Oli Ahmed and more than two dozen opposition leaders were charged by police with conspiring and abetting a cocktail blast inside the secretariat during hartal hours on April 29, 2012. Interestingly though, the investigation officer could not trace the prime accused of the case, prompting a Dhaka court to question the
legality of the probe.
More stories are there, similar in nature, which led the police to file a huge number of cases against BNP men.
Police filed more than 500 cases only in Dhaka district against around 24,000 BNP leaders and activists in 2013 alone, when the anti-government agitation was at its peak, according to counsels of BNP leaders accused in the cases.
Over the last eight months, police have submitted 59 charge sheets against BNP men.
The accused were charged with creating anarchy, vandalising and torching vehicles, hurling crude bombs at policemen and obstructing them from discharging their duties. Most of the cases are now at the stage of charge framing.
All these cases will deal a further blow to the BNP, which has been almost paralysed organisationally.
Everything suggests the AL that assumed office in a one-sided parliamentary election will face no strong opposition in the coming days. In parliament, the handmaiden main opposition Jatiya Party is unable to hold the government accountable for its activities.
And outside the parliament, the BNP-led alliance has been trapped in cases that may not allow it to wage any fresh agitation on the streets in the near future.
The government has been successful in its strategy of subduing the opposition with police force. It, however, is not a new strategy altogether. The AL leaders themselves had faced it when they were the main opposition during 2001-2006.
At the time, a large number of cases were filed in a similar fashion against AL men who had waged street agitations against the then BNP government.
Of the cases, the majority were filed under the Speedy Trial Act enacted by the BNP-led government in 2002. The AL had termed the law as a "black law."
The AL-led government, having assumed office in 2009, immediately freed its party men from all those charges by withdrawing more than 7,000 cases filed against its leaders and activists, terming them "politically motivated".
Now the AL-led government is using the same Speedy Trial Act in a rather intensified manner against BNP leaders and activists arrested almost on similar charges.
The BNP too has termed these cases "politically motivated".
The thing in common is that both governments for their political purposes have abused the police force, which is run by taxpayers' money and supposed to ensure people's security.