By Mamun Islam
RANGPUR, Aug 07, 2018 (BSS) – Freedom fighters in this northwestern district say they believe the belated Bangabandhu Murder Trial exposing assassins to justice largely frustrated an anti-Bangladesh design as the nation observes the Month of Mourning.
“Bangabandhu murder perpetrators wanted to bury the Liberation War spirit in a bid to revive Pakistan,” Shawkat Ali Sarker, who was awarded gallantry Bir Bikrom for his 1971 battle field role, told BSS.
Currently the chairman of Chilmari upazila of Rangpur, Sarkar, however, said he believed the trial “largely upset the conspirators” expecting the fugitive convicted assassins to be exposed to gallows in near future as some of them were hanged by now.
“The Bangabandhu killers’ trial is completed relieving the nation of a longstanding stigma and largely upsetting the conspirators,” he said.
Taramon Bibi, another gallantry award recipient freedom fighter, said “It was impossible for me to believe that Bangabandhu might be killed on the Bangladesh soil”.
“How he (Bangabandhu) could be killed on the Bangladesh soil when he sacrificed his entire life to serve the Bengali nation,” pondered Taramon Bibi, Bir Pratik.
She, however, expressed her happiness that Bangabandhu’s daughter Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s leadership made it possible to hold the trial of Bangabandhu killers and the 1971 war criminals.
Rangpur district Commander of Bangladesh Muktijoddha Sangshad Mosaddek Hossain Bablu said Bangabandhu just engaged himself in rebuilding the war-torn nation in spirit of the War of Liberation when he was assassinated right at that time.
“Bangabandhu and Bangladesh are inseparable and we would have never got the independence without Bangabandhu,” he said.
A distinguished civil society figure in Rangpur Professor Mozammel Hossain said the news of Bangabandhu’s predawn murder along with most of his family members on August 15, 1975 actually puzzled the nation.
“The murder was definitely aimed to overturning the country’s hard-earned independence . . . the same quarter is still hatching conspiracy to hinder the country’s development to realise Bangabandhu’s dream for Sonar Bangla,” said Hossain, a former treasurer of Begum Rokeya University.
Begum Rokeya University Vice Chancellor Professor Dr Nazmul Ahsan Kalimullah said the anti-liberation forces did not halt their evil designs after killing Bangabandhu, but were still hatching conspiracies to turn Bangladesh into a failed state.
“Bangladesh was born because of Bangabandhu and our country would have become a developed one long ago if Bangabandhu was alive,” he said.
Kalimullah, also a security analyst, however, feared Bangabandhu’s fugitive killers were patronizing militancy and terrorism in Bangladesh to destabilise the country.