by Asaduzzaman in Prothom Alo, July 22, 2023
Banianagar Mor (intersection) in Sutrapur is one of the busiest areas in Old Dhaka.
At 6:15pm on 30 December 20-25 leaders and activists of BNP and its affiliated bodies gathered there and started chanting anti-government slogans. When they were asked to stop saying anti-government slogans, they attacked the Awami League leaders and activists and then exploded cocktails with an intention to kill them.
This is the statement in the case filed by Dhaka South City Corporation’s No. 43 ward’s Awami League leader Khoyer Uddin Ahmed.
But when others present in the area were asked if they heard or saw anything like this, they couldn’t recall such an event.
In the case, it was written that the police had collected parts of the exploded cocktails and two unexploded cocktails as evidence.
However, the plaintiff said that the other party threw rocks from the streets but didn’t explode cocktails.
Ruling Awami League leaders have lodged 40 lawsuits in different police stations in the capital in the last seven months on allegations of such attacks. As many as 1,701 leaders and activists of de facto opposition BNP and its associated bodies have been made accused in the case filed between 17 November 2022 and 30 May 2023. Another 2,575 unnamed people have also been made accused in the cases.
BNP leaders term those ‘fictitious cases’. That means cases have been filed though the alleged incidents did not take place. As a result, the case statements and the sections under which the cases have been filed are almost same.
Many such fictitious cases were filed by police across the country before the parliamentary election in 2018. As many as 697 such cases were filed in Dhaka city alone in three months (September-November) before that election. A humongous 578 cases were filed in Dhaka in September alone. The cases filed under the Explosives Act and the Special Powers Act became known as ‘fictitious cases’ that time. https://en.prothomalo.com/bangladesh/politics/5rt9ng9vf8
