Close to 9 am on November 22, two black SUVs entered the Jatiya Party (Ershad) Chairman G M Qader’s Uttara residence. The men, drawn from Bangladesh’s Directorate General of Force’s Intelligence (DGFI), National Security Intelligence (NSI) and Special Branch (SB) alighted from the vehicles and sauntered into Qader’s living room.
Qader’s mobile phone was seized before the intelligence officers, using a combination of “gentle” threats and allurements, sought to coax and cajole the JP chairman to not be intransigent on joining a broad front led by the Awami League and context the elections scheduled to be held on January 7, 2024.
It has been reliably learnt that Qader and a few of his senior party colleagues had expressed strong reservations on contesting the elections and had wanted to be absolutely sure about the implementation of strong punitive measures by the US before committing themselves to take part in the polls.
Indeed, the Jatiya Party (Ershad) was on the verge of an imminent split when one of the founders, Raushan Ershad (Lt Gen Hussein Mohammad Ershad’s widow), met President Mohammad Shahabuddin and expressed her personal willingness to contest the elections.
While unconfirmed reports, including social media posts by dissident Bangladeshi officials, suggested that the intelligence officers were armed, Northeast News has not been able to verify this independently.
This “meeting” lasted for two hours before the Bangladeshi intelligence officers took Qader to the Baridhara home a foreign intelligence official who sought to intervene and explain to the JP chairman the immediacy of giving up on his stand to stay away from contesting elections.
As the pressure built up on Qader, the team of Bangladeshi intelligence officers next drove the Jatiya Party chairman to the Banani home of the party’s general secretary Mujibul Haq Chunnu who was taken to another location where yet another round of “conversation” took place. This round of “meeting”, which began around 12:30 pm, lasted till 2:30 pm.
Revealing in detail the “thug-like approach of the Bangladeshi intelligence agencies to forcibly secure the support of the Jatiya Party (Ershad) for the forthcoming elections”, security service sources revealed to Northeast News that the party’s “decision” to contest the polls was officially announced by Chunnu at his party’s Banani office 3:10 pm Bangladesh Standard Time (BST).
While the brazen intelligence “operation” was completed within a matter of seven hours, sources said that surveillance had been mounted on the Jatiya Party’s top leaders for a week. They were watched and trailed physically and their mobile phones were tracked non-stop for the same duration of time.
The Northeast News could not verify independently whether monetary inducements were offered – or even accepted – to the Jatiya Party (Ershad) leaders.
A similar “operation” was devised and executed by Bangladeshi intelligence agencies to “induce” Kalyan Party chairman Major General (retd) Sayyed Mohammad Ibrahim who was confronted with some visuals, including still photos and videos, before “securing” his inclusion in a Joint Front comprising other small parties that would contest the elections.
