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CASES OVER JULY UPRISING
Petitions pile up to drop names
EMRUL HASAN BAPPI
Faisal Hossain is one of the thousands of people injured during the July mass uprising. The 28-year-old was shot in the waist while pulling his rickshaw at Baipail in Dhaka’s Ashulia around 11:00am on August 5, just a few hours before Sheikh Hasina fled to India.
Badly injured, Faisal was rushed to Enam Medical College Hospital in Savar, where he was treated for about 45 days. He is still unable to work.
On October 15, his wife, Tania Khatun, filed a case for attempted murder with Dhaka’s chief judicial magistrate’s court, which directed the Ashulia police to register the complaint as a First Information Report (FIR).
The FIR named 203 suspects, including Hasina, several top Awami League leaders and senior police officials.
Just four days later on October 19, Tania changed her minds about some suspects, and filed a petition with a Dhaka court to drop 13 people previously named in the case. Their political identity is not clear from the petition.
“The accused were not present at the scene,” says the petition, seen by The Daily Star, adding that she initially named them “wrongfully and being aggrieved” by her husband’s injuries. “These individuals would be most grievously harmed if they are not excluded from the case.”
But Tania did not know then – and does not know now – any of these 13 people personally, or any of the suspects named in the case.
“I don’t know the updates of the case. My brother knows about it,” she said, indicating the complaint was drafted by her brother.
She hung up the phone when asked about the case details, and did not receive our calls since. The Daily Star could not contact her brother as she did not give his name.
Tania’s case is not isolated. This newspaper has so far found plaintiffs in 55 cases have submitted petitions to exclude at least 195 people they had initially named as suspects in cases for murder or attempted murder since the first week of August.
Of them, six are law enforcement officers, including Additional IGP Selim Md Jahangir and Bangladesh Border Guard Director General Major General Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman Siddiqui; two teachers of a public university; two officials of the environment department and former cabinet secretary Mahbub Hossain.
This newspaper could not establish any clear political connection of 75 people. The remaining are Awami League leaders and activists.
TWO BIZARRE CASES
Court records show at least 550 cases, mostly for murder, were filed with various courts and police stations in Dhaka till November 25 since August 5.
At least seven plaintiffs, including Tania, told The Daily Star that they were not involved in the drafting of the FIRs. They only signed the complaints drafted by others.
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