Majed joined 1975 carnage as lancer officer: Prosecutor

Cashiered military captain Abdul Majed had joined the 1975 putsch as a junior officer of army’s then lancer unit under one of the key plotters of the carnage, dismissed and executed lieutenant colonel Farook Rahman.

“Majed was a junior officer of the then lancer unit or tank regiment used in committing the carnage under Farook,” recalled Mosharaf Hossain Kajol, one of the prosecutors of Bangabandhu Murder Trial in late 1990s.

Alongside staging the massacre at 32 Dhanmondi killing Bangabandhu and most of his family members, Majed particularly unleashed the attack at the residence of water resources minister Abdur Rab Serniabat, he said.

Months later, Kajol said, Majed took part in the clandestine killing of four national leaders inside the high security Dhaka Central Jail on 3 November 1975 night, just when a counter coup dislodged the murders from Bangabhaban.

“This self-confessed killer not only took part in the 15 August carnage, but also (subsequent) the brutal killing of the four national leaders in the Dhaka Central Jail,” home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said after a specialised police unit arrested Majed last week.

Bangabandhu’s political secretary and Awami League leader Tofail Ahmed alleged that Majed was behind the killing of his elder brother Ali Ahmed in Bhola and his (Tofail) private secretary Shafiqul Alam Mintu, a BCS admin cadre officer of the 1973 batch.

“While I was in jail, (after 15 August carnage) I came to know that a gang of the killers equipped with sophisticated arms and instructed by captain Majed attacked my elder brother Ali Ahmed’s business office at Khayer Haat Bazar in Bhola.”

“They gunned him down on the spot,” Tofail recalled after Majed was captured to be exposed to gallows as a convict.

He said as the killers detained him along with several other senior Awami League leaders following the 15 August 1975 carnage, “I came to know that my private secretary Mintu got disappeared”.

“There were allegations that captain Majed gang killed him (Mintu),” Tofail said.