A murder case was filed against former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and six others on Tuesday over the killing of a grocer during a clash between police and quota reforms protesters in Rangpur on July 19.
Abu Sayeed had become the face of the movement that led to the fall of the Awami League government in Bangladesh. The lawsuit by Amir Hamza Shatil in the chief metropolitan magistrate’s court in Dhaka claimed that Sayeed was killed during indiscriminate police firing at students and civilians.
He said Hasina’s direction to the police to take strong action against the protesters led to Sayeed’s death.
The murder case also names former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, besides some senior cops.
A source close to Hasina, who flew to India after the fall of her government on August 5, said: “It is a malicious prosecution.... This is aimed at preventing our leader from returning to Bangladesh, or arresting her immediately on her return.”
“This is a mockery as the interim government has not done anything to probe the thousands of killings that took place across the country after August 5.... But let me tell you, these shenanigans would not work and our leader would return to the country,” the source added.
The loss of lives during the students’ movement had played a key role in galvanising support for the protesters. Bangladesh army chief Waqer-uz-Zaman, who oversaw the transition to an interim government headed by Mohammad Yunus, had assured the country that all the deaths would be probed.
The Awami establishment, however, had maintained that Hasina had instructed the law enforces to use non-lethal weapons to quell the protests. Leaders of the former ruling party had claimed that the Opposition BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami were behind the large-scale violence.
Salman F. Rahman, former adviser to Hasina, and former law minister Anisul Huq have been arrested in Dhaka
during an alleged escape attempt, Bangladeshi media reported.
Hasina’s appeal
Late in the evening, the government announced its decision to cancel the general holiday on August 15, the day of the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family which has been observed as National Mourning Day for years.
Around the same time, Hasina released a message urging people to observe the day with due respect and pay their tributes to the departed souls. She demanded that those involved in the violence be identified and punished.
Hasina expressed her condolences to those who had lost their near and dear ones like her.
The statement was issued through her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy, who lives in the US.
