Aug 21 Was a ‘Political Plot’ to Bury BNP Leadership: Gayeshwar

BNP senior leader Gayeshwar Chandra Roy said Friday that the August-21 grenade assault on the capital's Awami League rally was a 'judicial tool' to kill BNP leadership and pave the way for a 1/11 constitutional transition in 2007.

"The August-21 event was not confined to a big attempt to kill Hasina (current PM), but was primarily used as a strategic tool to undermine the leadership of nationalist movements," he said, reports UNB.

Speaking at a milad mahfil-cum debate, BNP member said, "The real culprits are still alive and secure. They're going in and out of the world, so there's no excuse for government security services to be ignorant of that. Because this is a question of political judgment, the truth may never fall out.

He said the entire politics has been endangered with an effort to suppress the truth with lies regarding the incident. “The August-21 incident could be an arrangement for bringing the 1/11 (army-backed) like regime.”

The BNP leader also said that BNP and its founder, Khaled Zia, were the perpetrators of 1/11, while the Awami League and Sheikh Hasina were the winners.

Dhaka District Unit BNP arranged the program in remembrance of its former president and party vice-chairman Abdul Mannan, who died last August 4 at the City Hospital. 

On 21 August 2004, a grisly assault on the Awami League anti-terrorism rally on Bangabandhu Avenue took place while the BNP-Jamaat Alliance was in government. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina – then leader of the opposition – was the main target.

At least 24 party leaders and activists, including the women's business secretary and late President Zillur Rahman's wife, Ivy Rahman, were killed and 300 others wounded. Hasina barely survived the assault, but her hearing was seriously damaged.

On 10 October 2018, a court in Dhaka sentenced 19 people to death, including the then BNP-led Minister of State for Home Lutfozzaman Babar. Tarique Rahman, the youngest son of Khaled Zia, and 18 others were all sentenced to life imprisonment.

Gayeshwar, a leader of the BNP Standing Committee, said the August-21 incident was aimed at rendering the state and then the government dysfunctional and humiliating.

He said that if Khaleda and Tarique had been active in the accident, citizens would not have thrown them out of control at the point. "But the leaf did not even rise, so there was no word from the citizens to know that such a misdeed should not be perpetrated by a democratic government."

The BNP leader admitted that they had some mistakes when their party was in power for which they are still paying direly. “But those who carried out the misdeeds on August 21, they didn’t suffer for it. They’re rather trying to be stronger around us. This (Aug-21 incident) plan was not plotted in Bangladesh as it came from somewhere else.”

Gayeshwar said it is their government’s failure to make the real perpetrators of the barbaric incident public.