A deadly September in Dhaka!
As many as 578 lawsuits were filed for incidents of sabotage including 90 attacks on the police only in Dhaka city in the month of September alone, police and court records say.
Law enforcement personnel of 50 police stations in the metropolis are the plaintiffs in almost all the cases that have implicated several thousand leaders and activists of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
The official records show, as high as 1,186 crude bombs, 370 petrol bombs and 20 kilograms of explosives were recovered in September -- only two months before the announcement of the election schedule.
The number of cases and explosives claimed to have been recovered have exceeded all previous records of a single month, and also less than half the number of cases filed during the years of political turbulence -- 2013 and 2014.
Even a police official, seeking anonymity, has said there is no previous instance of filing 196 cases under the Explosives Act, in a month.
However, when the policemen were allegedly struggling with such a huge attacks and incidents of sabotage, Dhaka city dwellers did not experience any violence in what, official reports suggest to be, a “deadly September”.
Rather, life in the mega-city was normal, according to interviews with a number of residents in the reported spots.
When approached, a number of high officials of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) declined to formally comment on the matter.
National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) chairman Kazi Reazul Hoque admitted the number of cases as 'certainly high' and said any scary situation should not be created before the elections and the law enforcement should not harass anyone.
“The number of sabotage cases for a month is of course quite high. It is the authorities who have to investigate it,” he told Prothom Alo.
After filing cases, the DMP has begun special raids to arrest the accused, mainly the opposition leaders and activists, when the country is going to hold the ballot for the 11th parliament, on 30 December.
A new table has been inserted into the DMP's everyday report on law and order for the arrested leaders and activists of the 20-party alliance. The opposition men are being shown arrested every day.
“Such atmosphere cannot be created before the elections when people can feel fear. At the same time, the law enforcement must make sure that no innocent person is harassed,” the NHRC chief added.
In such a context, leaders and activists of the BNP mostly remain absent from the scene when they are supposed to campaign for their candidates in the upcoming elections.
The police men are yet to make a pause as 76 more cases were filed in October and 43 in November.
More than 1,500 (1,509 to be specific as of 14 December) BNP and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami leaders and activists, arrested between September and December, were produced before the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Dhaka.
Six hundred of them were shown arrested in cases filed in September, according to DMP and Dhaka CMM court records.
Dhaka Bar Association president Golam Mostafa Khan, also a lawyer of many BNP men, alleged that most of those cases are fictitious.
“The cases were filed against the thana (police station) and ward level leaders because they are the main force in the elections,” he pointed out.
A legal expert, however, argued, “This is only normal that the police force will be concerned since 122 people were killed in pre-polls violence between 26 November 2013 and 4 January 2014 following the announcement of polls schedule.”
“The only difference is those incidents had actually taken place then. The people witnessed them, watched reports on TV and read them in newspapers but no one witnessed the latest incidents, as police claimed to have taken place in September. No newspapers published reports on such attacks and no TV channel aired reports such reports,” the legal expert pointed out.
No confirmed information of crude bomb blasts, rallies or sabotage was available during the visits in the past one month to the said places of occurrence mentioned in 34 such cases.
Also, an assistant commissioner of DMP, wishing not to be named, said the DMP uses the recently developed Citizen Info Management System (CIMS) and local leaders of the ruling party to get details of the BNP-Jamaat leaders before filing cases.
About the ‘fictitious’ cases, the assistant commissioner said they have been replacing the names, dates and places of incidents on older cases filed for politically-motivated violence.
“We’re doing it reluctantly as per directives from of the superiors,” the police official added.
Attacks on police
The law enforcement, the police headquarters records claimed, came under attack for 90 times in September. The number of such attacks was 15 in January, 14 in February, 8 in March, 10 in April and 8 in May.
However, the number of attacks on police increased to 25 in August, when school students were demonstrating demanding safe roads.
The reasons of sudden increase of attacks on police in September still remained unexplained.
The police records suggest most of those attacks, including hurling crude bombs aiming the policemen to kill them, were carried out by the BNP men every day as on 30 September. As many as 40 cases were filed with 30 police stations on that day against them.
The case statements say the BNP-Jamaat men attacked the police blocking roads of several areas with the intention to kill them with sticks.
The BNP leaders have already termed the cases as fictitious saying that those were being filed to stop them from joining the election, compelling them to pull out of race or to discourage party men and voters to go to the polling stations.
Most of the sabotage cases, in which the BNP men were implicated, were filed with Tejgaon industrial area police station.
Sub-inspector Mostafizur Rahman of the police station registered a case naming 145 BNP leaders on 30 September on charge of blasting crude bombs in front of Sikder CNG station around 3:15pm.
What witnesses say
An employee at the pump said no crude bomb was blasted on that day.
Four cases were filed against the BNP men with Sher-e-Bangla Nagar police station for exploding crude bombs in front of Nazneen School and College in Purba Razabazar area on 10 and 20 September. The law enforcement authorities said they recovered 27 crude bombs also from the spot on 10 September.
A Prothom Alo correspondent talked to a security guard, who stays in the area all the time, about the matter.
Stunned, the security guard said, “Who said this to you? Wouldn’t I know if any such thing had happened here?”
Another case was filed against 61 BNP men for explosion of crude bombs inside a hostel of Dhaka Dental College in Sobhanbagh.
A security guard there said on Friday, “What are you saying? Crude bomb blast would have rocked the building! There can be no question of my not knowing the incident.”
The police filed another case against 70 BNP men for blasting crude bombs at the eastern corner of T&T ground in Sher-e-Bangla Nagar area.
On Friday, a Prothom Alo correspondent talked to a shoe-repairman, who sits there regularly. He could not recall any incident of crude bomb blast or no one informed him of such incident, he said.
The statement of another case, filed against the opposition BNP leaders and activists, said several crude bombs were blasted at the Eidgah Ground near the BNP Bazar in West Agargaon on 4 September. The police recovered shards of the blasted crude bombs, it added.
Local boys, who play at the ground, said they had not heard about any such incident.
A rickshaw mechanic, who sits at a corner of the ground, was astonished when he was told about the allegation. “Such things don’t take place here at all.”
Afterwards, no such attacks were carried out on policemen in the areas under jurisdiction of the police stations that registered those sabotage cases, police now say.
Dubious recovery of crude bombs
In 2013, the police recovered 570 crude bombs and 4 petrol bombs in Dhaka and the number came down to 265 and six the next year. The number of crude bombs and petrol bombs recovered was 630 and 172 in 2015, and 1,746 and 579 in 2016, DMP reports show.
In 2017, the law enforcement recovered 1,879 crude bombs and 2,099 petrol bombs, according to their records. But, the reports confirmed, the number of crude bombs recovered in September this year alone was over 1000.
The media were not briefed about these recoveries although the police headquarters update newsmen after any such incidents and actions. A number of detectives expressed unwillingness to talk officially about these issues.
Also, the bomb disposal unit members of the DMP’s counter terrorism and transnational crime unit were not aware of the recovery of bombs in Dhaka, according to officials.
In September, the CTTC’s bomb disposal unit members, who are called to deactivate recovered bombs, were called only once.
A former inspector of general of police (IGP) Nurul Huda said to Prothom Alo, “Magistrates take charge of the cases even if those are filed by the police. He can take action if he finds discrepancies in any stage of investigation.”
“The government tries to use the policemen in various ways. Earlier, the police didn’t easily succumb to any illegal order but now that culture is no longer there … The police has become a part of the political party,” said Abdul Qayum, another former IGP and an adviser to the BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia.
He is afraid if such actions disrupt the chain of command in the police force.
Supreme Court lawyer Shahdeen Malik said, “It’s clear from the incidents that the law enforcement members have become the ruling party activists instead of becoming officers of the republic.”
“It would become tough for any government to run the state a day when the law enforcement members are used as a tool to harass the citizens instead of fighting criminals. It seems our country is turning into a state devoid of welfare concept” he feared.