Dhaka, July 03: Bangladeshi authorities are on
track to try the culprits involved in the bloody paramilitary
BDR mutiny "expectedly under the Army Act", as the disarmed
border guards were set to get back their weapons soon with the
situation gradually being "normalised".
"The Bangladesh Rifles soldiers at the battalion and
sector headquarters across the country will get back their
weapons soon with the gradual return to normalcy" in the
paramilitary force, BDR chief Major General Mainul Islam said.
Islam said he expected normalcy to return in the
paramilitary once the trial of the rebellious soldiers was
completed to "de-stigmatise" the "morally shattered" innocent
BDR men after the February 25-26 carnage.
He said the paramilitary force recently sent a letter
to concerned government authorities with request to stage the
trial under the Army Act since the "offenders and victims" of
the rebellion belonged to "disciplined armed forces".
BDR officials said that though the border guards at
the frontline border outposts (BOPs) retained their weapons, a
process was initiated to return the weapons to "innocent
soldiers" who were disarmed.
Asked if the trial of the rebellious soldiers under
the Army Act would be compatible with the ongoing
investigation under the civil Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC),
the BDR chief said there would be no contradiction under the
principle of "concurrent jurisdiction" of the law.
BDR chief Islam said the BDR law was not suitable for
the trial of the rebellious soldiers’ as it did not have any
provision for such trial while the Section 5 of the Army Act
allowed the government to try members of any disciplined force
under the military law in court marshal.
Law Minister Barrister Shafique Ahmed earlier said
there was no bar in trying the suspected rebel BDR soldiers
under the Army Act while the BDR Act only dealt with the
routine affairs of the paramilitary troops.
The mutiny had exposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s
government to its toughest challenge soon after its
installation following the December 29, 2008 general
elections.
The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) was
carrying out the routine police investigations into the
carnage while a high-powered government committee and a
military probe panel earlier completed their separate probes
into the rebellion.
Abdul Kahhar Akand, CID's main investigation officer
in the case, said that 1,543 BDR soldiers and nearly 30
civilians, including a former BNP lawmaker, have been arrested
so far for their suspected involvement in the mutiny in the
paramilitary force’s Pilkhana headquarters at the heart of the
capital city.
Akand said 225 of them, including a key-planner of the
mutiny BDR officer Touhid Alam and soldier Habibur Rahman, who
reportedly shot dead the paramilitary force’s chief Major
General Shakil Ahmed, admitted their role in the rebellion.
"The investigations are underway but I can't tell you
certainly when it is expected to be completed," Akand said.
Another 1,723 BDR soldiers were detained in 29
districts for staging mutiny and looting weapons as the
rebellion broke out at the headquarters in Dhaka.
The government committee report had said that a sense
of deprivation had been manipulated to trigger the mutiny.
However, only a few BDR men knew about bloody plot. It bluntly
admitted “without hesitation that the real causes and
objectives of the gruesome incident could not be ascertained
clearly and it requires further investigations”.
Bureau Report