Post-coup president admitted his regime to be unconstitutional: BSS

Khondaker Mostaq Ahmad, who was installed as the puppet president by the 15 August 1975 carnage perpetrators, himself acknowledged his short-lived regime to be unconstitutional in a radio and TV address soon after assuming office on that fateful day.

Bangladesh’s Supreme Court in a belated verdict called “illegal” the Moshtaque and subsequent military regimes that grabbed the power after the 15 August coup which also toppled father of the nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s post independence government.

“The armed forces had to come forward since the change of the government as expected by all quarters could not take place in accordance with rules,” Moshtaq said in his speech, the transcript was which appeared in the next day’s Ittefaq newspaper.

The military, however, never owned the coup while Awami League and political and defence analysts consistently said some derailed army officers staged the coup and killed Bangabandhu along with most of his family members.

Mostaq, however, claimed in his speech that the armed forces expressed their utmost trust and obedience to his so-called government.

On 18 September 1980, an international commission was constituted in London to investigate into the Bangabandhu assassination and subsequent murder of four national leaders - Syed Nazrul Islam, Tajuddin Ahmed and captain (retd.) Mansur Ali, and AHM Quamruzzaman inside Dhaka Central Jail.

British jurist Sir Thomas Williams Q.C, MP headed the commission constituted on appeals by Bangabandhu’s two surviving daughters Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana alongside Syed Ashraful Islam and Mohammed Selim, the sons of two of the assassinated leaders Syed Nazrul islam and Mansur Ali.

After examining different documentary evidence, the commission reached a conclusion that the killings were carried out under the leadership of a few “retired and in-service army officers”.

Mostaq stayed in power for only 82 days when he ordered the 3 November 1975 killing of the four national leaders and enacted a now scrapped infamous indemnity law to protect the killers from justice in the form of an ordinance.

Writer Ghulam Murshid in his book “Muktijuddho O Tarpor” wrote Mostaq along with Faruque and Rashid designed the plot of jail killing so they could not reemerge as the nation’s radar even if a countercoup toppled his illegal government.

A military coup indeed toppled the Mostaq regime on 6 November 1975 installing Supreme Court judge Abu Sadat Mohammad Sayem as the president, who too was ousted soon as the then army chief major general Ziur Rahman appeared as the strongman of Bangladesh usurping the state power.