The JaSaD leader died at a Dhaka hospital on Friday morning, his family said
It’s not the time to go back in history: Inu on Syed Ashraf’s remark
JaSoD leader and Cabinet member Hasanul Huq Inu says he finds remarks by Awami League’s Syed Ashraful Islam, blaming his party for creating grounds for the assassination of Bangabandhu in 1975, ‘uncalled for, unfortunate, and irrelevant.’
Published : 15 June 2016, 06:28 AM
Updated : 15 June 2016, 11:39 AM
“This is not the time to go back in history,” the information minister told the media on Wednesday.
Awami League General Secretary Syed Ashraful Islam on Monday said his party would have to ‘atone’ in future for making Inu a minister.
Reacting to the remarks, Inu said: “We believe this is not the time for a blame game within the 14-party Alliance.
“This is not the time to dip into the history, but the time to crush militancy in Bangladesh.”
Syed Ashraf’s sudden remarks against the JaSoD leader have prompted a flurry of comments from politicians over the past two days.
Shirin Akhter, general secretary of the JaSoD faction led by Inu, feared Ashraf’s accusations would lead to an unnecessary divide within the ruling coalition.
But Inu is confident the remarks will not impact the 14-Party Alliance.
“The unity of the JaSoD and the Awami League is a political decision. I’ve said many times that this unity was the result of a serious analysis. So, such comments will not affect it.”
The decision of the two parties to work together had proved positive for Bangladesh, he said, advising the ruling coalition to ‘not lose their patience to provocation’.
Speaking at a meeting of the Awami League’s student wing Bangladesh Chhatra League at the Dhaka University, Syed Ashraf said JaSoD was a ‘reckless group’ that had tried to ‘tear apart a newly liberated Bangladesh’ even before Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s return home.
Syed Ashraf’s father Syed Nazrul Islam was among the four national leaders murdered in Dhaka Central Jail in the months that followed the assassination of the nations’ founding father in 1975.
He said: “If they (JaSoD) had not fully prepared the ground for the Bangabandhu’s murder, Bangladesh would have been a very different place.”
JaSoD: Looking back
Just after independence, Bangladesh Chhatra League split in two over a conflict with Sheikh Fazlul Haque Moni, nephew to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
In 1972, Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal or JaSoD was formed under the leadership of Sirajul Alam Khan who was known for having close ties with the Bangabandhu.
The group planned armed revolution to bring about ‘scientific socialism’. It set up a military wing, Ganabahini, which bears the blame for causing terror beyond the arena of politics.
Turbulent days followed the assassination of the Bangabandhu, then the President, and most his family members on August 15, 1975. In November, then army chief Ziaur Rahman was confined to his home before he was rescued by Md Abu Taher, a retired army colonel who was heading the Ganabahini.
Taher was later tried by a military tribunal over sedition and executed. A court ruling a few years ago judged his execution as murder committed by Gen Zia.
Decades later, JaSoD joined the coalition led by the Awami League and is now part of the 14-Party Alliance.
Inu, who was deputy chief of JaSoD’s military unit, was elected MP after contesting in the 2008 election on an Awami League ticket.
In 2012, he was given the charge of the Ministry of Information in the government led by Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of the Bangabandhu.
He retained the portfolio after the Awami League was elected to its second consecutive term through the election on Jan 5, 2014.
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