Eighteen years have passed since 24 people were killed and scores injured in the August 21, 2004 grenade attack on an Awami League rally at Bangabanbdhu Avenue in Dhaka, but the victims of the attack are yet to get justice.

Most of those killed and injured in the attack were AL leaders and activists. Then opposition leader and AL president Sheikh Hasina  escaped the attack but suffered hearing damage due to explosions.

‘I want to die after seeing that all the perpetrators have been punished,’ Rashida Akter Ruma, who was among those injured by grenade splinters, told New Age on Thursday.

Ruma, now a joint secretary general of ‘21 August Bangladesh’, a central organisation of family members of the dead and injured in the grenade attack, urged the government to bring all the fugitive convicts back to Bangladesh and punish them after completing the legal procedures during its tenure.

Of the two cases filed by the police on August 22, 2004 in connection with the attack, one was over the murders and the other under the Explosive Substances Act, while a judicial inquiry was also carried out, led by an Appellate Division judge, into the attack.

The Dhaka Speedy Trial Tribunal-1 on October 10, 2018 sentenced former state minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar and former deputy minister Abdus Salam Pintu, both of then ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party, and 17 others to death and jailed 19 others, including current acting BNP chair Tarique Rahman, for life and 11 others for varying terms in the two cases over the attack.

Former inspectors general of police Ashraful Huda, Shahudul Haque and Khoda Baksh Chowdhury, former assistant superintendents of Criminal Investigation Department Munshi Atiqur Rahman and Abdur Rashid and CID special superintendent Ruhul Amin were among the 11 police officers convicted in the cases for diverting the course of investigation.

The convicted police officers are now free on bail while their appeals against the sentences stand pending.

On November 27, 2018, the reference of the 38 death sentence recipients was sent to the High Court for the examination of the lower court verdict.

On January 13, 2019, the High Court accepted the appeals filed by 31 convicts.

The absconding 18 other convicts, including Tarique Rahman, did not appeal against the trial-court verdict.

Attorney general AM Amin Uddin told reporters at his office in the past week that the government had applied to the chief justice for assigning a High Court bench to hear the reference of 19 death sentence recipients and some appeals from among the total 38 convicts in the two August 21 grenade attack cases.

He disclosed that the government had already prepared the paper book on the death reference.

‘It is a very important case as there was an attempt to destroy the democratic system of the state through the grenade attack on August 21, 2004,’ the attorney general observed.

He hoped that a bench would be assigned to hear the death reference and appeals after the Supreme Court’s September 4–October 13 vacation.

Appellate Division registrar Mohammad Saifur Rahman told New Age that steps would be taken as per the relevant procedure after the scrutiny of the paper book, the last step before sending a death reference to a High Court bench for hearing.

SM Shahjahan, chief counsel for former BNP state minister Lutfozzaman Babar and former BNP deputy minister Abdus Salam Pintu, told New Age that he would look into the case when the death reference would come for hearing.

It would take at least one year to take up the hearing of the death reference in the case over the August 21 grenade attack if the serial for the hearing of death references is maintained, said Aminul Islam, another lawyer for Babar, and Mohammad Ali, the lawyer engaged to conduct appeals for the convicted Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami  leaders in the case.

They said that the hearing of the grenade- attack-case death reference could be held earlier only if the chief justice issued a directive to hear the death reference on a priority basis surpassing the serials of other such references.

The High Court is now hearing death references until 2019, they added.

Meanwhile, Md Jalal, a man from Senbagh, Noakhali, who had been shown as Joj Miah by the investigators in 2004 and falsely accused as a grenade attacker, told New Age on August 18 that he served a legal notice on August 11 on the home secretary, the inspector general of police and nine others, seeking Tk 10 crore in compensation for his wrongful detention and implication in the grenade attack cases.

The others from whom the compensation was demanded include the deputy commissioner of Dhaka, the officers-in-charge of the Motijheel police station in the capital and the Senbagh police station in Noakhali, Lutfozzaman Babar, former IGP Khoda Baksh Chowdhury and three former investigation officers of the cases Abdur Rashid, Munshi Atiqur Rahman and Ruhul Amin for their role in his false prosecution and detention that damaged his and his family’s lives.

He also applied for the formation of an inquiry committee to ascertain their liabilities in violating his fundamental rights by wrongfully keeping him in jail for four years — from June 10, 2005 to June 27, 2009 — in the two cases over the attack.

Jalal, too, demanded befitting punishment for the perpetrators of the grenade attack.

The one-member judicial inquiry commission of Justice Joynul Abedin, formed on August 22, 2004, submitted its report to the home ministry on October 2, 2004 with 14 short- and seven long-term recommendations.

‘The commission has not been able to identify the actual culprits,’ the report said. ‘But it has nevertheless been able to identify the masterminds behind the incident,’ the report added.

The course of the investigation into and the story about the grenade attack changed time and again with the changes in the state power.

The Criminal Investigation Department arrested 20 people and allegedly forced Md Jalal, shown as Joj Miah, and Abul Hashem Rana and Shafiqul Islam, both from Faridpur and brothers-in-law, in 2005 to confess that they had carried out the grenade attack.

The investigation into the cases took a new turn after a military-backed interim government took over power on January 11, 2007, with Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami operations commander Mufti Abdul Hannan, arrested on October 1, 2005 in the Ramna Batamul blast case, making a statement before a court on November 1, 2007.

On June 9, 2008, the CID pressed charges against Abdus Salam Pintu, Mufti Abdul Hannan and 20 others in the two cases.

After recording testimonies of 61 prosecution witnesses, the tribunal on August 3, 2009 ordered further investigation into the cases following petitions by the prosecution after the Awami League assumed power early that year.

On July 3, 2011, the CID submitted supplementary charge sheets against 30 more people, including Tarique, Babar, Harris Chowdhury and then Jamaat-e-Islami secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed.

Until CID special superintendent Abdul Kahar Akand submitted the third charge sheet, four other investigators had investigated the cases and two of them were made accused in the cases.

Mojaheed was dropped from the trial after he was hanged on November 22, 2015 on conviction of crimes against humanity committed during the 1971 War of Independence.

Mufti Abdul Hannan Munshi and Sharif Shahedul Alam Bipul were also dropped from the judicial process after they were executed on April 12, 2017 on conviction of killing three people and injuring a former British high commissioner in Bangladesh and dozen others in Sylhet.

The survivors and victims of the attacks told New Age that they had been passing their days in a trauma since the attack and harassment in the false prosecution.

‘It is painful for us that injured people are dying one after another but none of them could see the execution of the perpetrators of the attack,’ said bomb-splinter-injured Mahbuba Parvin, who was Swechchhasebak League Dhaka north unit’s women’s affairs secretary at the time of the attack.

‘I demand that Tarique Rahman and his accomplices, who plotted the attack, be executed together immediately,’ Mahbuba, now a vice-president of the Dhaka district north unit of Swechchhasebak League.

Mahbuba’s left side has been paralysed from the attack and she still requires support to walk.