Pilkhana carnage: Blast case trial tangled up in court

With BDR mutiny in Pilkhana rolling into its thirteenth year, the case filed under the Explosives Substance Act is yet to be disposed of due to negligence of the concerned officials and trial proceedings moving at a snail’s pace.

Due to the delay in the completion of the trial in the blast case, 468 former Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) members are still languishing in jail despite being acquitted or concluding their jail terms in the murder case filed over the BDR mutiny.

On February 25, 2009, several hundred BDR (now Border Guard Bangladesh) men staged an armed mutiny at the Darbar Hall of the force’s Pilkhana headquarters in Dhaka. They killed 74 people, including 57 army officers.

The mutiny ended the following day with the surrender of firearms, ammunition, and grenades through negotiations between the then government and the BDR rebels.

Three days after the massacre, two cases – one for murder and another under the Explosives Substance Act – were filed with Lalbagh police station. They were later transferred to the New Market police station.

Syed Zakir Hossain/Dhaka Tribune

After investigation, the CID first submitted the charge sheet in the explosive case against 808 people. Later, it added 26 more, taking the total to 834, to the supplementary charge sheet submitted in court.

Of the 834 accused, one was a civilian and the rest were BDR men. Of them, 24 have died since then, 790 people are alive, and 20 are still on the run.

Dhaka court sources said though the trial proceedings in both cases started in August 2011, the blast case was put on hold to make way for the carnage case first.

The proceedings of the case resumed only after the carnage case verdict in November 2013.

Court sources said the trial in the explosives case has been stuck with the Dhaka Metropolitan Sessions Judge’s Court for years, leaving the defense team frustrated.

A total of 210 witnesses out of 1,300 testified before the court in the case till now.

The case is still pending as the rest of the witnesses are not turning up before the court for testifying.

On February 9, the 210th witness gave deposition before the court and then the Metropolitan Special Tribunal-1 judge KM Emrul Kayesh fixed March 9 for the next hearing.

Defense lawyer Faruk Ahamed told Dhaka Tribune: “The trial in the blast case is stuck as the prosecution is failing to produce witnesses before the court.

“It has been 13 years and the trial is still ongoing. It is difficult to say when the trial will end,” said a disappointed Faruk, adding that the accused were suffering from different ailments in jail and their bail should be considered on humanitarian grounds.

On the other hand, Public Prosecutor Mosharraf Hossain Kajol told Dhaka Tribune that the prosecution hoped to finish the trial by this year and expected the court to pronounce the verdict this year concluding the trial”.

The state lawyer blamed the pandemic for the delay in the case.

A total of 468 accused of the blast case are languishing in jail even after 13 years of the incident.

Of the 468, a total of 278 BDR soldiers were acquitted from the murder case while 190 BDR soldiers were sentenced to different terms of imprisonment.

Family members of the accused 468 former BDR members recently held a press conference seeking Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s intervention for the release of their loved ones from jail.

Shakib Ahmed Sagor, son of accused Subedar Abdur Rashid, told Dhaka Tribune: “My father was acquitted of the murder case charges but he cannot come out of jail due to the pending case.”

The court was also not allowing bail for his father, said the son.

Md Wares Ali, son of another accused, said: “My father was acquitted of the murder charge but he is still in jail. We want the Prime Minister’s intervention to have my father released from jail.”