Criminalisation is a stumbling block to a healthy political culture in Bangladesh, says High Court

The High Court has said criminalisation of the political system and the reliance of the parties on rampant activists are a stumbling block to the development of a robust political culture in Bangladesh.

Sounding a warning in its judgment on the assassination of Ahsanullah Master, it says democracy will fall flat on its face and the rule of law will not be there if such a healthy culture cannot flourish.

Justices Obaidul Hassan and Krishna Debnath of a High Court bench made a series of observations in Wednesday’s verdict that confirmed the death penalty for six people including BNP leader Nurul Islam Sarkar for the murder over a decade ago.

The court said very few murders of this nature had happened in Bangladesh’s history. A fair idea of the degree to which criminals are dictating terms to politicians can be had through the events that had by looking back at what had happened at the Noagaon MA Majid School.

Ahsanullah Master, a popular Gazipur politician and then an Awami League MP, was gunned down, along with another person, while addressing a local conference held at that school’s ground at Tongi on May 7, 2004.

A Speedy Trial Tribunal in April 2005 had handed down the death penalty to 22 people, including the main accused, Sarkar, and life in prison to six others for the killing.

Apart from retaining the maximum punishment to six, the High Court reduced the death penalty of seven to life imprisonment. It upheld the life in jail sentence of another.

The same sentence on another fugitive convict remained, as he did not appeal.

The court also acquitted 11 others, who were given either the death sentence or life in prison, after hearing their appeals against the sentences.

Based on its evaluation of police investigation report, court documents and witnesses’ statements, the High Court in its ruling said Ahsanullah’s murder was the result of a conflict between Nurul Islam Sarkar and Awami Juba League’s central leader Mahfuzur Rahman Mahal.

Many others including Mahal were injured in the gun attack।

The court observed that it was proved during the trial that the convicts had planned to kill both Mahal and Ahsanullah.

A 1971 war veteran, Ahsanullah had served as the Gazipur Upazila council chairman before being elected a lawmaker twice in the general elections of 1996 and 2001.

He was a member of the party’s national council and the then executive president of the Awami League’s labour affiliate, Jatiya Sramik League.

The court observed that the incident was a ‘mass killing’ for which Sarkar and his accomplices were ‘directly responsible’.

It said that the killing of Ahsanullah was the murder of an ideology.

Justice Obaidul Hassan said the judgment was written in Bangla so that the plaintiff and everyone else may understand it easily.

Agreeing with the verdict written by his colleague Justice Debnath, Justice Hassan read out the observations in a packed courtroom.

The verdict called Ahsanullah’s murder as one of the ‘worst’.

It said Sarkar and Mahal were competing for the slice of the illegal drug business in the locality. Sarkar and his accomplices had planned to kill Mahal as he was causing trouble for the former.

Accused Mahbubur Rahman’s confessional statement is a proof of their plan and accounts of two of the witnesses corroborated it, the judges pointed out.

It observed that an analysis of Rahman’s statement will make it appear that the target was only Mahal.

But convicts Nurul Islam Dipu and Shahidul Islam Shipu only fired at Ahsanullah Master after being instigated by Sarkar, who had brought two to the scene of the crime in his car.

Ahsanullah was vocal against drug peddling and criminal activities in Gazipur, the verdict said.

The convicts were so ‘unwavering and reckless’ in killing Mahal and Ahsanullah that they did not even bother to wear masks to hide their identities.

They did not think that opening fire at a rally in broad daylight might lead to mass casualties.

They were so ‘desperate’ that they even had thought that if anyone saw them nothing would happen to them.

The judges in the verdict said the killers were reckless because they thought they had a power backing them up that would protect them from all possible troubles after the murder.

These ‘local rampant political miscreants’ get to think this way because the political parties never show the willingness to leave them out of their organisation; rather they display ‘much dependency on them’, which results to the massive obstacle to the development of a healthy political culture.

The court said Ahsanullah Master was an ‘ideal person’ and if he was alive he would have been able to do ‘much good work’ for the welfare of people and the nation would have benefitted from his work.

“The accused have denied the nation that by killing Ahsanullah Master. Today’s society lacks ideal political leaders like Ahsanullah Master,” it observed.