Deposition of the dead

Let us never forget Ivy Rahman and the others who lost their life on August 21, 2004

Prior to this, the men in uniform use batons and tear gas on the fleeing people to make room for accomplishing their important assignment as pre-planned. A number of ambulances are there in a desperate bid to reach the dead and the grievously wounded. They are not given access instantly and are held back deliberately. Those who are still on their feet entreat the policemen frantically to come to their rescue, but the latter are cold, unmoved, and are in sullen silence.

My last breath is yet to bid me adieu. I lie head down in a pool of blood on my stomach. Many panic-stricken men and women run helter-skelter, trampling on my almost inert body. Perhaps, in the darkness of the tear gas smoke they mistake my corpse as a part of the bituminous street. I see someone in a desperate bid to lift the body of a lady -- both her legs are severed from the body, having been struck directly by the killer grenades. Could she be Ivy Apa, a front ranking female leader of Awami League, I wonder.

Instantly, I am still able conjure up the brutal murderous act of Jallianwallah Bagh during the British rule as described in the pages of history. The tragic episode doesn't end here. Some men are readily available to give their own part of the story as to the vantage points where from the killer grenades were hurled. To me it appears to have been a deliberate attempt at misleading the investigation that soon follows. They are in desperate bid to convince their listeners that the grenades were thrown from within the crowd in the street. To me this claim sounds absurd and ridiculous. The crowd has been so thick here that there has not been hardly any elbow space to gain momentum.

The mischief of such a misleading information appears to me very much linked with a purpose -- the purpose to protect the occupants/owners of at least one multi-storied commercial building opposite the make-shift dias.

I understand that the caretaker of the building denies the suggestion that the intruders had access to the roof, since the door to the roof is claimed to have been locked all the time. Some others suggest that the killers used the windows of the fifth floor. In any case, no clue to the crime perpetrated is instantly available.

I am now lifted along with my fellow travelers to the other world for a yet more excruciating and trying experience in the mortuary. On arrival here too the so-called "long hand of law" appears to be longer yet. Near ones of the "dead" are running back and forth to find out if their kith and kin are in the morgue. They are swinging between hope and desolation. After a lot of hassles at the place of massacre due to some ominous delay in getting clearance from the outrageous "high levels" the dead are now huddled together on the floor of DMCH mortuary. Here too, the policemen on duty are stiff-necked. They literally beat back the anxious men and women in their frantic bid to identify their near ones. Those who succeed after much efforts are yet to be sure as to how soon they shall be able to take home their dead relations.

Hours pass by in waiting as if unto eternity. At long last the autopsy starts to meet the requirements of law. It is again a brutal knifing of the dead who like me fell prey to the grenades thrown by the assailants. There are yet many more grievously wounded men and women who have no chance of medical attention here in the Dhaka Medical College Hospital. Well-wishers and relatives move them out to other private clinics and hospitals wherever there is room. In the process of such transfer, some succumb to their injuries. They are not accounted for in the ultimate list of the twenty dead.

Concurrent wild gossip is in the air, I understand. The whole dastardly act and attempt to wipe out the entire Awami League leadership was conceived and planned by some vested interests in the party with the tacit blessings of Sheikh Hasina herself! That's how, the gossip-mongers claim, she escaped unhurt, and some of her closest allies in the party purposefully kept themselves away from the scene of occurrence, because they knew such diabolic things would happen.

A Jaamati leader rejects in a hurriedly called press conference that there is any "fundamentalist" party in Bangladesh and that the grenade attack must have been the work of some extremists planted from alien soil to create law and order problems in the country. He claims too that the Jaamat-e- Islami party has no connection or link with any such extremist group.

The Prime Minister, who until recently sarcastically discounted the news that the leader of the opposition was threatened via telephone with death when she was in Istanbul, Turkey, expresses agony at the news of the grenade blasts at the Bangabandhu Avenue meeting of Awami League. She sends a lesser emissary with a letter to Sudha Bhaban, desiring a personal meeting with Sheikh Hasina to express her sympathies. She fails due to the resistance of the party workers. In such a compelling situation she soon makes a rethinking, specifically rejecting the notion that the four-party alliance had any involvement. She re-tunes herself with the usual blame on "internal rift."

The whole would is rocked. International condemnation gets large publicity in the global media. The world leadership expresses serious concern. Under pressure, the government accepts Interpol and FBI assistance, but before their arrival, many of the clues have been effaced, not only by ignorance, but perhaps deliberately.

There are a lot of misleading words and acts. The Interpool and FBI are nowhere close to the actual fact of the crime. They are guided by the same intelligence of Bangladesh who have failed miserably to find any clue to the crime.

Keeping conformity with the date of the mishap, that is August 21, the official number of dead is now twenty one. This number is indeed a bearer of many a sad story linked with our history language, literature, and life. It takes us back to February 21, 1952 -- the mournful day many of our brethren lost their lives for our mother tongue, Bangla. It is a terrible pity that our Jatiya Sangsad couldn't have any opportunity to discuss the August 21 incident. Isn't it a shame I ask, before I am interred in the darkness of the grave -- my eternal shelter.

Kazi Alauddin Ahmed is a management consultant.