Of murders, investigation and the mockery

M. Shahidul Islam

If impulsive sound bites could resolve mysteries of high-profiled murders, investigators would have been better off by napping on their arm chairs instead of digging for clues. Inordinate sound bites since the gruesome murders of Cesare Tavella and Kunio Hoshi are making the police and other investigators confused and careless. In this hope-forsaken nation, sound bites are what matter; facts are hostage to fictions.

Lest we forget, the US had warned Bangladesh authorities about the possibility of such attacks while the Australian cricket team had cancelled a scheduled trip to Bangladesh based on similar prescience. More so, responsibility for the two attacks on foreigners was shouldered by the Sunni fanatic group IS fighting in Syria and Iraq.

Let investigation proceed
Besides, barely a month ago, authorities arrested a British citizen and three others, allegedly connected to the IS, over the series killing of four atheist bloggers, including one US citizen of Bangladeshi descent, Ovijit Chatterjee.
That means, according to authoritative assertions, IS was there yesterday, but not today. For Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal had insisted from the very outset of these two murders that ‘there’s no IS operatives in the country and the incidents were not executed by the IS.’ On Sunday, the Prime Minister proffered to chip in upon her return from New York and, likewise, she too ruled out the possibility of IS’s involvement in the commissioning and the execution of these crimes.
This led the authorities to slam shut the avenues of an investigation into the likely IS involvement in the murders; despite the Sunni Islamist radicals not being known to have posted false claims on countless acts of barbarity they’ve been committing, globally, for nearly five years now.
The outright discarding of the IS’s involvement, or the plausibility of it thereof, had resulted in a nationwide hunting and indiscriminate arrest of many BNP and Jamaat leaders on suspicion of being involved in these two murders. Social media outlets claim such arrests to number over 2000, across the country, up until October 6.
The ongoing witch hunt of the Jamaat and BNP activists indicates the Jamaat and the BNP are the main suspects in the commissioning of the crimes, provoking rabid suspicion that the two foreigners’ killing incidents are motivated by political expediency of a party that needs to live on phantom issues to hoodwink everyone, everywhere.
Fooling around is one thing, but who can switch off street lights in Gulshan facilitating to commit crimes is a question police must exhaustively explore for the sake of keeping this nation safe for its inhabitants, including the foreigners who live here.

Dhaka-Delhi in agreement
The suspicion of a false flag operation gained more credence following the reporting on Monday, October 6, by the Times of India that “Indian intelligence agencies are discounting the possibility of Islamic State’s involvement in the recent killings of an Italian and a Japanese national in Bangladesh.”
Quoting un-named Indian intelligence sources the paper said: “They (Indian intelligence) suspect the involvement of Jamaat-e-Islami hardliners and see the murderous attacks as a ploy to draw attention of the Western nations to the targeting of its top leaders for 1971 war crimes without proper trial.”
Foremost, this facile assertion is flawed by its sanguinity, or whatever that may be, that foreign governments would impress upon Bangladesh courts to let go the accused of war crimes if few of their co-nationals are murdered in Bangladesh by the Jamat-I-Islami.
As well, the fact that no Indians have been touched as yet, who’re found entering in droves and working and doing business even illegally inside Bangladesh, is not a factor that adds into the evaluative matrix of the Indian intelligence outfits; despite that reality perforce denoting that only India can help the most in influencing the incumbent AL-led regime in Bangladesh to get many of the accused Jamaat leaders off the legal loops.
The evolving spectacles remind one of a 1930s song that reads, “I can hear what you say, but I don’t care anyway.” If a hen fails to lay an egg in today’s Bangladesh, blame must be passed onto the BNP or the Jamaat. This is the reality that must be grappled, however bitter it may taste.
Then again, there’s another angle to look at the entire saga, based on the authorities’ ongoing witch hunts against BNP-Jamat activists. The 20 party compact, of which the BNP is the leader, had reportedly moved their main activities away from Bangladesh in order to avoid more persecutions of their leaders and workers who’re numbering over 45,000 in prison, as of now.

What’s next?
That implies the BNP would be banking more on cooperation of foreign governments’ to establish democracy in Bangladesh, following its failure to even get permission to hold a rally or a meeting in the country, for months.
This scenario might have pushed the incumbent AL regime into a tight spot to prove that the BNP-Jamaat compact is a bunch of criminals who even do not discriminate between locals and the foreigners; in so far as their marauding propensity to kill and maim is concerned. And, that may be what lay behind the motivation to slaughter some foreigners, solely involved in humanitarian and development works inside Bangladesh.
The other incidents of concomitant murders that followed—-including the murder of a police inspector in Ishawardy, one former PDB boss and a self-styled sufi saint named Khijir Khan in Dhaka, and the botched attempt on the life of a Pastor in Rajshahi, among many others—-are indicative of a pattern that fits neatly with who Jamaat usually targets as its perceived or real enemy. So the Jamaat-BNP nexus is at the root of everything. And that’s the thesis awaiting probing.
The conclusion, hence, is a straight-forward one. For now, forget about the prospect of a fair investigation as the two murders seem to have been chomped by the whirlwinds of Bangladesh’s vicious political propensity of blaming the opposition parties. However, do stay tuned to see what dice is rolled next to debut another brand of new episode of timeless mockeries that will surely extinguish more lives of innocent humans, foreigners or not.

Source: Weekly Holiday