Untold Facts

Vengeance: Hasina Style

Vengeance 6000 miles away
On the 24th March, there was a long post editorial in a Dhaka daily (Bengali), a contribution from a retired Bangladeshi journalist of BBC Bengali Service settled now in England wherein he lamented that the P.M. Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh has settled against him a score of vengeance from six thousand miles away. I have carefully read through the item as normally as I do in Dhaka for any of his published item I happen to come across for useful information for my own interest and consumption.

Politics to avenge ‘killing’ of father
In the item there are many important points, the pertinent one was that he was not invited to attend the 38th Independence Day reception this year on the 26th March 2009 hosted by the Bangladesh High Commission in London. He lamented this for the fact that since 1972 he enjoyed along with his wife having had invitation in each and every Independence Day celebration reception in London, this 38th day celebration was the only exception for him. He has reasoned the exception for Hasina’s vengeance against him that he fell in anger of her from sometime back as he kept on pointing out to her mistakes and wrongdoings in politics. One concrete example he cited was that in an interview at the BBC Bengali Service in London (Bush House), when not in power, Hasina stated some thing of his mind in a tape recorded version process that as he thought was not right in making statement for her own benefit, stopped the recording right then at the point and advised her to revise the specific words. The words were like this, “I hate politics, but only to avenge the blood of my father’s killing, I have come to do politics’.

Love and hate
He continued to fall from grace of Hasina as time went on as he continued to point out to her mistakes and wrongdoing.

Image building
One may not know that she owed the closeness with him and Chacha Vasti or uncle niece relation since her father’s time dating back to pre-1971 days, particularly when her father had been having wide coverage and projection from the BBC, particularly from this journalist during the independence movement of Bangladesh. But some how somewhere things went wrong and their pleasant relation turned gradually sour.

The P.M. Hasina took on avenging
In regard to vengeance she frankly admitted of her mind against the ‘killers’ of her father in August 1975, she made all her mark of everything on her part as the P.M. during 1996-2001 to finish hang up to death the ‘killers’. In five years term, she could not see finish the due process she expected though unduly interfered and influenced on the judiciary not only by having the lower court judgment totally dictated by her and the high court benches intimidated by hoodlums of her own party cadres. Thus what happened was miscarriage of justice. But at the end of the term when the next election was due in 2001, in public meetings, she openly asked the voters to vote for her and her party Awami League so that she could once again become the P.M. and ‘hang’ those not still then hanged to death by his own hand (“NIJER HATE”) as her verbatim rhetoric in Bengali went on. She did not win the election. The opposition won and formed the next government. Thus her craze for vengeance remained unrealized. Even so the case now has been pending in the Appeal Division of the Supreme Court.

Hasina has her final sword in hand
It is now her turn of the P.M. that began on the 6th January 2009. She has got the golden scope to finish up her father’s ‘killers’. People expected that as the judiciary is given independence and expected to be free from executive interference the serious miscarriage done in three stages of the case from the judge court to the High Court, but the expectation raised for fairness without Hasina’s interference is under serious doubt.

15 August 1975 was a day of victorious coup in Dhaka and so had indemnity
Let us recall here that the 15th August 1975 was no case of any ordinary killing to be taken cognizance of culpable homicide or murder of anyone but obvious happenings of some bloodletting that in all likely to accompany any army coup d’etat. The coup though unfortunate it was a victorious one and so had automatic indemnity for any bloodletting and not a failed one to be indicted as any of criminal offence. That is why no case was lodged for 21 years, and the coup operators enjoyed freedom, some in their original professions and some in others. Col ® Farook, one of the accused, contested the 1987 Presidential election and secured the third highest position in popular vote cast.

Many judges stood against Hasina’s sword
It was thus Hasina’s vengeance and vengeance alone as she had had sole intention to come to politics for reprisal of her father’s killings, she took to politics that she proved also herself worthy by filing a simple murder case in concocted manner which by no means was a cognizable murderous offence but one of obvious bloodletting of any coup not considered as cognizable offence in Cr. P.C. Hasina out of vengeance alone made that a cognizable offence flouting the international legal maxim, FACTUM VALET. And so went all in the due process miscarriage of justice at every stage so much so that a High Court seating judge considering the case at his disposal termed the earlier judgment in the lower court having poor base that led him to comment that ‘after one hundred years people will say that it was not a judgment at all’. He also said that the then Army Chief must not have been a witness, rather he should have been an accused. One former retired Chief Justice commented that the case was not of simple murder one but a case involved in politics. Still another High Court retired judge on he 15th August 2008 in addressing a meeting in Dhaka stated very clearly, ‘whoever would seek hanging of Farook must before that and first of all seek hanging of the then Army Chief General Safiullah, because, as he meant, the Chief failed to stop his subordinate went for the coup. This news was published in many Dhaka dailies on the 16th August 2008 and in some periodicals soon afterwards.

Seven judges felt rightly embarrassed
That as many as seven of the High Court Judges felt ‘embarrassed’ to hear the death reference case, though was ignorantly taunted by Hasina, left by itself another proof that the case lacked in merit from ab initio or from the very start in late 1996 and was a clear issue of vengeance of Hasina.

Bravo Octogenarian journalist
The octogenarian London based journalist has done a good service to the common peace loving people in opening up example of Hasina’s lower instinct of vengeance when at this very moment she has in all likely taken on the case at the Appeal of the Supreme Court for final disposal unlikely to be uninfluenced by the Chief Executive of Bangladesh now in the person of Hasina.

Author: Dr.M.T. Hussain