Joj Mia complexity hinders hearing

A defence refusal to cross-examine Jalal Ahmed alias Joj Mia as a witness has halted the hearing in the Aug 21 grenade attack cases.

Court Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 14 Oct 2014, 06:36 PM
Updated : 15 Oct 2014, 01:17 PM

Special court Judge Shahed Noor Uddin left the courtroom after the defence declined to cross-examine Mia on Tuesday.

Lawyers said the scheduled hearing on Wednesday, too, could be hampered unless the complication was resolved.

The two cases -- one for murders and the other for the use of explosives -- filed over the attack on an Awami League rally in Dhaka on Aug 21, 2004 when BNP-led Four-Party Alliance was in power, are now at the stage of recording witnesses’ statements.

At least 24 people were killed and over a hundred others, including present Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who was the opposition leader at the time, were injured in the attack.

The judge of Dhaka’s Speedy Trial Tribunal-1 is hearing the cases at a special courtroom set up in the Dhaka Central Jail.

Mia was accused in the case and arrested on June 9, 2005 from Noakhali for his alleged involvement in the 2004 attack.

The CID filed a charge-sheet in 2008 after getting a ‘confessional statement’ from him.

But further investigations, carried out during the caretaker government, revealed that the BNP-Jamaat government tried to make Mia a scapegoat to divert the case.

He was released in 2009 after the court acquitted him of the charges.

The CID filed a supplementary charge-sheet implicating 30 others, including BNP Senior Vice-Chairman Tarique Rahman, Jamaat’s Secretary General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujaheed, and former state minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar, on July 3, 2011 at the court’s order.

Mia, his mother, and sister have been named witnesses in the cases.

But the defence objected to Mia’s testimony in the case, arguing that an accused could not be a witness in the same case.

Lawyers of accused Ujjal Mia applied for cancel Mia’s statement made on Sept 30.

Tuesday was fixed for cross-examining Mia, but the defence again declined to accept him as a witness.