The blood of millions spilled during the birth of Bangladesh in 1971 never really dried. India’s eastern neighbour has been forever trapped in a never-ending saga of political assassinations and violent power grabs. Deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina being awarded the death penalty for crimes against humanity in July-August 2024 is simply the latest chapter.
Tarique Rahman, acting chairperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Hasina’s bitter rival, was the previous one. And like a good OTT story with many seasons, Bangladesh’s revenge saga is far from over.
The new season
On November 17, a three-member International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), led by Justice Md Golam Mortuza Mozumder, sentenced Hasina to death for crimes against humanity during the July uprising last year. She was handed the death penalty for the shooting and killing of six unarmed protesters in Dhaka’s Chankharpul on 5 August last year.
Former Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal has also been awarded a death penalty. Meanwhile, former inspector general of police Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, who became the first accused to turn into a state witness since the tribunal was set up in 2010, was sentenced to five years of imprisonment in the case. The court also ordered the confiscation of the properties of Hasina and Kamal in favour of the state. While Kamal is a fugitive, Mamun is in custody.
Reacting to the judgment, Hasina said it exposed “the brazen and murderous intent of extremist figures in an unelected government. For the record, I wholly deny the accusations that have been made against me in the ICT. I mourn all of the deaths that occurred in July and August, on both sides of the political divide. But neither I nor other political leaders ordered the killing of protesters,” Hasina said.
While the Mohammad Yunus-led interim government has called on India to hand over Hasina after the verdict “in accordance with the extradition treaty between the two countries”, the BNP has said that justice has been delivered.
The party’s standing committee member, Salahuddin Ahmed, said that the verdict was a milestone. “Although the punishment may not fully match the gravity of the crimes, it will serve as an example so that no future government or individual can become fascist, authoritarian or dictatorial,” he said.
It is difficult to read Ahmed’s statement on the verdict as non-partisan because not only is his party a political rival to Hasina’s Awami League, but his party boss, Tarique Rahman, was awarded life imprisonment, and Hasina was the country’s prime minister then. How the tables have turned!
Also read: Pakistan is bluffing. There’s no proof for $6 trillion mineral wealth claim
The previous season
On October 10, 2018, Rahman was sentenced to life imprisonment by a special court in Dhaka. The court found Rahman guilty of criminal conspiracy and multiple counts of murder over a 2004 grenade attack that injured Hasina and killed 24 people. Rahman’s mother, Khaleda Zia, was the prime minister then.
The attack on the Awami League rally in Dhaka also left more than 300 others injured. The target of the attack, then-opposition leader Hasina, escaped death but suffered hearing loss. Around 19 people were sentenced to death, including former Interior Minister Lutfuzzaman Babar and former Deputy Minister of Education Abdus Salam Pintu. Eleven others were handed jail terms of varying lengths.
And where was Rahman at the time of the verdict?
Like Hasina is in India currently, when she was awarded a death penalty, Rahman was in London when he was awarded life imprisonment in 2018. And Sheikh Hasina was the country’s prime minister.
Rahman had fled Bangladesh for London in 2008. In 2016, the high court in Bangladesh had sentenced him to seven years in jail and fined him 200 million taka over money laundering charges.
Like the BNP’s standing committee member Ahmed, who has remarked today that the verdict was a milestone, Hasina’s Awami League had said then that Rahman’s life imprisonment verdict was the right decision by the court.
Interestingly, less than a month after the fall of the Hasina government on August 5, 2024, the Bangladesh Supreme Court’s appellate division upheld the high court verdict acquitting Rahman and others in the 2004 grenade attack case.
No wonder all my sources in the Awami League today also dismissed the death penalty verdict on Hasina as politically motivated, which would be overturned on a later date!
But the story of Bangladesh’s political rivalry was bloodier before.
Also read: Pakistan can’t bomb or bargain its way out of the TTP-TLP mess
Back to the beginning
Hasina’s father, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, had become the first elected prime minister of Bangladesh on 7 March 1973. He had promised to make Bangladesh a modern secular country where citizens rose above religiosity to forge together a nation based on common language and culture. Bangladesh had become a free country, and Mujibur had become its tallest leader after brave soldiers of the Mukti Bahini—the East Pakistani guerrilla force—had taken on the Pakistani army with the help of the Indian army.
Yet on 15 August 1975, it was part of Bangladesh’s own army that assassinated Mujibur during a coup, along with most of his family. Hasina was out of the country then, along with her sister Sheikh Rehana.
There were murmurs in Bangladesh’s power circles about who was behind the assassination of Mujibur, and there were unsubstantiated claims of General Ziaur Rahman’s tacit nod to the plot to kill Mujib. The Awami League had always blamed General Zia as one of the main conspirators behind the plot to kill Mujib.
An article titled ‘Ziaur Rahman: The Mastermind Behind The Assassination of Bangabandhu & His Family’ on Awami League’s official website reads: “Backed by Ziaur Rahman, Khondaker Mostaq emerged as the self-proclaimed President of the country after the brutal assassination of Bangabandhu and his family on 15 August 1975. In the last week of September, Mostaq issued the infamous Indemnity Ordinance to protect Bangabandhu’s killers. It was originally called Ordinance No 50 of 1975. Later in 1979, after declaring himself the President of the country through a dramatic vote, General Ziaur Rahman turned this ordinance into law. He approved it in his self-decorated parliament.”
In the next bloody chapter of the revenge saga, General Ziaur Rahman, who had become the sixth President of Bangladesh, was assassinated on 30 May 1981 in Chittagong during a coup attempt.
Again, it was a faction of army officers, led by Major General Mohammad Abdul Manzoor, that killed him and several others at the Chittagong Circuit House, where General Zia was staying.
But in Bangladesh’s highly polarised political climate, there are claims and counterclaims about the mastermind behind General Zia’s assassination.
Thus, the story of Bangladesh that began in 1971 with a bloody birth and continued with plot twists and planned political murders will not become tepid after the news of Hasina’s death penalty. If elections do happen in Bangladesh in February 2026 with the Awami League’s participation, there is every possibility that there will be yet another sudden surprise round the bend. One can only hope it would not be bloody.
Deep Halder is an author and a contributing editor at ThePrint. He tweets @deepscribble.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)