Even as credible reports – and documents – are emerging of Bangladeshi Awami League ministers, MPs, judges, and their spouses leaving the country for safe havens elsewhere, the agitating students have launched a website detailing the identities of army and police officers, Chhatra League cadres who willfully killed some of the protesting demonstrators between July 17 and 21.
Importantly, a former Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) chief, Lt Gen Akbar Hossain, along with two other unidentified individuals, are named in a list of VIPs who have either exited or will leave Bangladesh in a matter of hours or days.
These include the spouse of Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmood and a group of Awami League ministers. Northeast News is in possession of two lists of these escapees who number 25. The spouses of these VIPs, most of whom have not been named, are also on the list in the form of numbers. There is no knowledge of the destination of these VIPs, but sources said that the escapees may use a single flight out of the trouble-torn country.
The website launched by the students, named chinerakhun.com, has been designed to be a live “document”. It already contains the names of an army officer Lt Col Redowanul Islam who fired from his AK47 rifle and shot to target the students “under the Rampura overbridge on July 27, 2024”.
Likewise, the names and photographs of two officers-in-charge and two sub-inspectors have also been put up on the website. These are Apurbo Hasan, OC of Pallabi police station, in Dhaka. He was videographed saying, “We have killed. But what to do now”. This statement is displayed under his photograph and brief bio.
Mohammad Arshad Hossain Akash, the OC of Shahbag police station, is also named as having committed atrocities against one student. A Sub-Inspector, identified (with photograph) as Yunus Ali, has been described as the policeman who shot Abu Sayed to death on July 16.
The website designers have sought to keep the platform “live”, meaning that all Bangladeshis can add details of individual cases of shootings and other atrocities committed by the police, Chhatra League, BDR, and army personnel during the tumultuous days.
Mehedi Hasan Kawsar Sajeeb, said to be a former “Senior Vice President, 1st Ward Chhatra League” in the Uttara area of Dhaka, allegedly “attacked female protestors” on August 2.
The website’s details will constitute the evidence in the event a countrywide investigation is held against individuals, both from the police, paramilitary forces, the army, and the Chhatra League, in the days and weeks to come after some form of order is established over Bangladesh.
Among the VIPs who are expected to leave Dhaka today are Justice Mohiuddin Shamim, ministers Mohammad Abdus Shahid, Mohammad Tajul Islam, Abul Hasan Mahmood Ali, Obaidul Moktadir and former Finance Minister Moustafa Kamal ‘Lotus’. The two lists also contain the names of several serving MPs, including Anwar Hossain Manju and ex-parliamentarian Mohammad Habib Hasan.
The name of industrialist and banker “Nazrul Islam Mazumdar (Director, FBCCI) + 1” is also on the list, two managing directors (Washim Rahman and Imranur Rahman), Mohammad Jashim Uddin (President SAARC, CCI) and Suraiyya Begum + 2 (Commissioner and Senior Secretary) among others.
