Eleven days after the grisly grenade blasts at an Awami League rally on August 21, 2004, the then prime minister Khaleda Zia pinned the blame on AL leaders.
This week, 82 months into the attack, the Criminal Investigation Department pressed charges against her son Tarique Rahman, nephew Saiful Islam Duke, ex-political secretary Harris Chowdhury, ex-state minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar and some former top police and intelligence officials of her administration.
According to the supplementary charge sheets submitted on Sunday, Islamist militants had collaborated with Hawa Bhaban, former political office of BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia, and the then administration to plot and stage the attack, the most gruesome in the country's recent history.
Interestingly, three weeks into the blasts, Khaleda said no extremist groups existed in the country.
Speaking at a BNP parliamentary party meeting, she said, "We have to prove that we don't patronise Islamist extremists and that no such groups exist in the country."
She also accused AL, the then main opposition, of conspiring to tarnish the country's image.
Ten days before that speech, Khaleda said the attack was part of a conspiracy to tarnish her administration's image and divert public attention from her government's success.
"As investigations are on, I won't name anyone. But I do know for sure that there was a plot, which is still being nursed," she told her party meeting on September 2, 2004.
Less than a month into the attack, BNP lawmakers in parliament blamed AL for carrying out the attack on its own rally, which killed 24 of its leaders and workers including incumbent president Zillur Rahman's wife Ivy Rahman and injured 300 more. Hasina, then leader of the opposition, narrowly escaped death.
Through multiple investigations, the BNP-Jamaat alliance government was relentless in its efforts to establish that AL killed its own activists to tarnish the government's image.
They also tried to prove that "foreign enemies" instigated the carnage, and some listed criminals holed up in India had taken part in the attack.
The one-member judicial probe commission of Justice Joynul Abedin, which the then government formed a few days after the attack, claimed to have identified the perpetrators.
"The incident is a naked attack on the country's independence and sovereignty," the commission chief told reporters after submitting a 162-page report in October 2004.
The report, which has never been made public, put it all down to a "foreign enemy". But the investigators failed to substantiate that claim.
In line with the four-party alliance government's stance, the investigators made up a story involving Mokhlesur Rahman, an AL leader and former ward commissioner of Moghbazar in the capital.
They also attempted to feed the public with another story woven around one Joj Miah.
Joj was made to give a confessional statement naming Mokhlesur as one of the plotters.
During the BNP-Jamaat rule till October 2006, the investigators were out to send the probe in the wrong direction to save the real culprits.
Three former Criminal Investigation Department officials now face charges of misleading the investigation.
During the four-party rule, the CID had failed to submit charge sheets, though the then government leaders claimed several times the investigation was about to be completed and everything revealed.
Media reports on the cooked-up story of Joj Mia brought to public attention the then CID officials' move to divert the investigation.
During the last caretaker government rule, the first charge sheets in the August 21 cases were placed against 22 people including ex-BNP deputy minister Abdus Salam Pintu and 21 Huji leaders and workers.
Even then, the investigators could not unmask the masterminds and unearth the sources of the grenades used in the attack.
Some officials in the law enforcement and investigation agencies told this correspondent that when government high-ups openly blame some people or groups for any crime, investigators cannot work independently.
It was obvious to the top officials that either they have to follow the dictates of the four-party government or quit, added the officials.
Besides Khaleda, several influential ministers and leaders blamed AL for the grenade attack. Ironically, a few of them are now accused in the August 21 cases.
After the blasts, Lutfozzaman Babar, the then state minister for home, declared a Tk 1 crore reward for information leading to the names of the individuals or groups responsible.
Describing his announcement of reward as "unprecedented", Babar told journalists eight days after the attack, "The government has decided to announce the reward since it is giving highest priority to the matter."
In parliament, BNP lawmaker Shamsuzzoha Khan alleged that AL itself had exploded the grenades at its rally as part of a conspiracy against the government.
At the same sitting, the then foreign minister Morshed Khan said, "We know better who sheds crocodile tears at meetings with foreign envoys and from where the money for treatment comes."
Abul Khaer Bhuiyan, another BNP lawmaker, asked Babar in parliament why AL had changed the rally venue. Babar replied, "It's a good question. Awami League had sought permission for Muktangan, but in the afternoon of the day they moved the venue to Bangabandhu Avenue."
A day after the attack, when journalists asked Babar to comment, he urged people to help the probe by providing information to the home ministry.
The following day, journalists were barred from the home ministry, but the state minister denied any such move by his ministry.
After the August 21 carnage, Harris Chowdhury said, "The prime minister has called upon all, irrespective of party affiliations, to uproot terrorism from the country. She strongly condemned the incident.
"A judicial investigation commission has been formed. The commission will find out the reasons and the masterminds behind the incident to try them."
Apart from the August 21 blasts, at least two dozen terror attacks took place during the BNP-Jamaat rule. They included the grenade attacks on former finance minister and AL leader Shah AMS Kibria, the then British high commissioner to Bangladesh Anwar Choudhury, AL lawmaker Suranjit Sengupta and Sylhet city mayor and AL leader Badar Uddin Ahmed Kamran, militant assault on writer Humayun Azad, and blasts at three cinemas in Mymensingh. Investigations into all the incidents had been politicised like the one into the August 21 blasts.
Source : The Daily Star
