Bangladesh fails to start trying deadly 2016 Kalyanpur anti-terror raid

It took two years for the investigator to press charges in court in a case over the deadly anti-militant raid on a house in Dhaka’s Kalayanpur. Three more years have gone by, but the court has not begun the trial.

State counsels blame the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic for the delay in starting the trial at Dhaka’s Anti-Terrorism Special Tribunal. But the fact remains that the outbreak began a good year after the charge-sheet was filed.

The militants at the terror den are believed to have links to the massacre at Gulshan’s Holey Artisan bakery, which happened 25 days before the raid.

One of the suspects, Rakibul Hasan Regan, 21, was caught alive and later sentenced to death in the Holey case.  

The police believe the house at Kalyanpur was one of the dens where the militants of Neo-Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh or Neo-JMB holed up before the Gulshan attack.

The police killed nine militants in the raid on the house on Jul 26, 2016. The militants rented a flat on the fourth floor. The house, for its ship-like design, is called “Jahajbari” by the locals.

One of the accused, Ajadul Kabiraj, 28, is still at large. All the suspects were members of the banned militant outfit Neo-JMB, the police said.

Inspector Md Shahjahan Alam of Mirpur Police Station filed a case under the Anti-Terrorism Act against 10 people over the raid on the next day.

Besides Ajadul and Ragan, the accused are Salahuddin Kamran, 30, Abdur Rauf Prodhan, 63, Aslam Hossain alias Rashed alias Abu Jarra alias Rash, 20, Shariful Islam alias Khaled alias Solaiman, 25, Mamunur Rashid Ripon alias Mamun, 30, Mufti Maulana Abul Kashem alias Baro Hujur, 60, Abdus Sabur Khan alias Sohel Mahfuz alias Nasrullah Haque aka Musafir alias Joy alias Kulmen, 33, and Hadisur Rahman Sagar, 30.  

Rauf and Kashem are out on bail while the others are behind bars.

Along with Regan, Aslam Hossain alias Rash, Sagar, Sohel, Shariful and Ripon were given the death penalty in the Gulshan attack case on Nov 27, 2019.

Defence lawyers have appealed to the court for the acquittal of Rauf, Kashem and Kamran, but the state counsels want them to be formally charged.

Inspector Mohammad Jahangir Alam of the police’s Counterterrorism and Transnational Crime unit, who investigated the case, submitted the charge-sheet on Dec 5, 2018.

The case was forwarded to the Anti-Terrorism Special Tribunal on May 9, 2019 for trial. The tribunal judge received the charge-sheet on Jul 18 the same year, but the charges have not been framed yet.

Asked about the delay in the indictment of the accused, state counsel Golam Sarwar Khan Zakir said, “The accused could not be brought to the court from the Kashimpur jail due to security reasons amid the coronavirus lockdown. This is the biggest reason behind the failure to start the trial.”

“Moreover,” he added, “it takes time to start the trial when there are fugitive suspects. In this case, one accused is on the run.”

The hearing on the charge-framing began in February 2020 before the pandemic hit Bangladesh. Currently, the case is at a level when the court holds further hearing on indictment and issues an order.

After the hearing on Feb 6 last year, the court set Mar 23 to issue an order. The date was later deferred to Apr 23.

Meanwhile, the first lockdown over the coronavirus outbreak began in the country, forcing the courts to halt hearings.

When the courts reopened, the tribunal set Jun 9 this year to resume the hearing of the case, but the courts were closed again due to the pandemic.

Defence lawyers alleged the state is neglecting the case because most of the accused have been sentenced to death in the Gulshan case.

Sarwar denied the allegation, saying, “Besides the Holey Artisan terror attack, we’ve completed the trial in the cases over the killings of blogger Avijit and publisher Dipan. We will also try to complete the trial in this case by presenting the witnesses once the charges are framed.”

The tribunal on Feb 16 this year sentenced five militants to death and an extremist blogger to life in prison for the murder of US-based Bangladeshi science writer-blogger Avijit Roy.

The assailants hacked Avijit to death and injured his wife Rafida Ahmed Bonya in the attack near Amar Ekushey Book Fair on Feb 26, 2015.

In a series of attacks on writers, bloggers, and publishers, militants also killed Avijit’s publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan, who ran Jagriti Prokashony, at his office in Shahbagh on Oct 31 the same year.

A week before the verdict in the Avijit murder case was out, the tribunal sentenced eight people to death for the killing of Dipan.