Untold Facts

Climate of fear and intimidation

Some eminent members of the Bar appeared as special counsels for the state before the Special Bench of the Supreme Court in the hearing of the appeal against conviction of prisoners in the death row for the murder of late President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The appellants have been arguing that a mistrial took place, since their acknowledged involvement in what was essentially a coup leading to the assassination of the-then President could not be tried as an act of murder (One appellant pleaded innocence of any direct part in the act of assassination and prayed for mitigation of sentence for presence and involvement in the scene of the crime).
The learned special counsels for the state argued that the appeal should be dismissed since there was no scope of retrial in the long-delayed case, and indeed the Bench, by upholding the High Court confirmation of the verdict of the trial judge, would do its duty to absolve the Supreme Court hierarchy of the sin of failing to uphold the Constitution. The Supreme Court was obliged to move suo moto against the perpetrators of the crime of the-then President’s assassination and other unconstitutional acts in August 1975, and their failure to do so has rendered the regimes that followed (till date?) unconstitutional. It was argued that the-then chiefs of armed services, the judiciary, the civil administration, the members of the police force, all “from top to bottom” broke their constitutional oaths and continued to do so all these years by failing to bring the perpetrators of the assassination to justice.
Newspaper coverage of the ongoing hearing has been at variance and sometimes contradictory. The layman reaction to the reports overall has been that the special counsels for the state were in effect substantiating the appellants’ position that the state machinery “from top to bottom” abandoned the assassinated President and accepted the change of state power resulting from the act of assassination. In other words, it was a coup d’etat. The act itself was post facto condoned by the-then commanders of the armed forces, in effect recognising the incident as an army mutiny, albeit under circumstances of command failure. It is up to the appellate court to decide on the relevance and merit of the arguments on both sides. But what surprised many was the orchestrated reminders by the counsels of the state to the Bench, as a successor body of ’sinning’ predecessors who allegedly failed their constitutional oath. The Bench, therefore, has to do the right thing by condemning the appellants. To many lay readers, the tenor of such arguments sounds more like threats than submission of law points, and an attempt to obliterate 34 years of the historical continuity of the nation-state.
Outside the courtroom too, an intimidating climate has been created by the arrests and long remands of brother, daughter, sons and nephews of the appellants or their absconding co-defendants in the trial-court case, on suspicion of their involvement in a street explosion that on October 21 hit the car of Barrister Fazle Noor Taposh, MP, a state counsel in the Supreme Court hearing and also the son of the assassinated President’s nephew who was killed too during the coup d’etat. The investigators of the attempted murder case instituted by Barrister Fazle Noor Taposh have released to the press stories of scandals involving the daughter of an absconding coup leader and one of the army intelligence officers, now overstaying abroad, who was powerful during the last caretaker regime. Little progress has been made, or made known to the media, about apprehending the real culprits or their masterminds in the case of alleged attempt on the life of Barrister Taposh. Elaborate leaks were then made to newsmen by the investigating team that some “junior” members of the army, angered by the Peelkhana massacre, were suspected to be involved in the attack by a remote-controlled bomb. The reason for their anger is that Barrister Taposh was named by some BDR mutineers as the public representative they had contacted for their grievances before the BDR mutiny.
The superintendent and co-ordinator of the investigating team of Dhaka Metropolitan Police has since denied that some army officers are in custody for interrogation in relation to the case. The Home Minister has in the mean time taken it upon herself to comment on the ongoing investigations, saying that if any armyman is found involved in the case, he will not be spared. Without ascertaining whether proof of any such involvement was found, she went on to say that misguided armymen have been involved in such activities from time to time since 1975, but repetition of such acts of indiscipline will cease once the verdict of the murder of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is implemented.
The image of the armed forces is clearly under attack from a section of the establishment, orchestrated by media embellishments. The spectre of the Peelkhana massacre, on the other hand, is also continuing to haunt our defence services. The inhabitants in our border regions are living in fear under sporadic attacks from trigger-happy Indian Border Security Forces, across their barbed-wire fences along our land boundaries. Discerning citizens cannot but be concerned that appropriate initiatives are yet to be undertaken to reduce internal tensions and to strengthen security against external transgressions.

Author: Sadeq Khan
Source: Weekly Holiday