Moshtaq himself admitted his regime to be unconstitutional: record

3952

DHAKA, Aug 11, 2018 (BSS) – Khondaker Mostaq Ahmad, who was installed as
the puppet president by the August 15, 1975 carnage perpetrators, himself
acknowledged his short-lived regime to be unconstitutional in a radio and TV
address soon after assuming office on that fateful day.

Bangladesh’s Supreme Court in a belated verdict called “illegal” the
Moshtaque and subsequent military regimes that grabbed the power after the
August 15 coup which also toppled Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh
Mujibur Rahman’s post independence government.

“The armed forces had to come forward since the change of the government as
expected by all quarters could not take place in accordance with rules,”
Moshtaq said in his speech, the transcript was which appeared in the next
day’s Ittefaq newspaper.

The military, however, never owned the coup while Awami League and
political and defence analysts consistently said some derailed army officers
staged the coup and killed Bangabandhu along with most of his family members.

Mostaq, however, claimed in his speech that the armed forces expressed
their utmost trust and obedience to his so-called government.

On September 18 in 1980, an international commission was constituted in
London to investigate into the Bangabandhu assassination and subsequent
murder of four national leaders- Syed Nazrul Islam, Tajuddin Ahmed and
Captain (Rtd.) Mansur Ali, and AHM Quamruzzaman inside Dhaka Central Jail.

British jurist Sir Thomas Williams Q.C, MP headed the commission
constituted on appeals by Bangabandhu’s two surviving daughters Sheikh Hasina
and Sheikh Rehana alongside Syed Ashraful Islam and Mohammed Selim, the sons
of two of the assassinated leaders Syed Nazrul islam and Mansur Ali.

After examining different documentary evidence, the commission reached a
conclusion that the killings were carried out under the leadership of a few
“retired and in-service army officers”.

Mostaq stayed in power for only 82 days when he ordered the November 3,
1975 killing of the four national leaders and enacted a now scrapped infamous
indemnity law to protect the killers from justice in the form of an
ordinance.

Writer Ghulam Murshid in his book “Muktijuddho O Tarpor” wrote Mostaq
along with Faruque and Rashid designed the plot of jail killing so they could
not reemerge as the nation’s radar even if a countercoup toppled his illegal
government.

A military coup indeed toppled the Mostaq regime on November 6, 1975
installing Supreme Court judge Abu Sadat Mohammad Sayem as the president, who
too was ousted soon as the then army chief major general Ziur Rahman appeared
as the strongman of Bangladesh usurping the state power.