Ekatturer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee has claimed that 39 people were killed during the rally and sit-in programmes of Hefazat-e-Islam in the capital’s Motijheel area on May 5-6 this year.
Of them, 24 were killed from morning to 8pm on May 5 in Hefazat activists’ clashes with law enforcers and Awami League activists, the organisation claims in a white paper it published on Friday.
Another nine people got killed on May 6 morning during clashes between Hefazat and Jamaat-e-Islami activists and law enforcers at Kanchpur on Chittagong Road, Madanipur and Narayanganj.
The white paper titled “400 days of Hefazat-Jamaat’s fundamentalist and communal terrorism” says five more people were killed at Hathazari in Chittagong that day while the other one was killed in a clash at Comilla railway station.
Hefazat has so far claimed the number to be 79 although it has failed to prove the claim.
Odhikar, another human rights organisation, earlier claimed that 61 people had been killed on May 5 night during police action.
While discussing the 1,250-page white paper, Shahriar Kabir, executive president of Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee, on Friday said they had determined the number based on “extensive investigation into the matter since mid-May.”
“The list of people killed we are providing is the only real list as we have prepared it after verifying all the lists provided by Hefazat, Odhikar and the home ministry,” said Shahriar, a member of the committee’s investigation team.
He said the investigation team had also contacted all the families of the deceased.
Shahriar Kabir demanded punishment to Hefazat chief Shah Ahmed Shafi and Opposition Leader Khaleda Zia as “all the killings and vandalism took place on their direct orders and provocation.”
He also said Hefazat, BNP and Jamaat would have to take the responsibility of the families of those killed as those killings had occurred because of their political ambition and power politics.
He blamed the government for having given Hefazat the permission to conduct the May 5-6 rally, especially after the Islamist group’s huge rally in Dhaka on April 6.
Shahriar urged the government to give Tk1m to the families of the victims.
The committee suggests that the government recognise the Qawmi madrasa certificate so that “evil forces” like Hefazat and Jamaat cannot take advantage by using such humble and poor students of these madrasas.
Shahriar Kabir said the white paper aimed at making people aware of all aspects of Hefazat’s May 5-6 anarchy in and around the capital’s Shapla Chattar.
Syed Amirul Islam, chief of the investigation committee, said the government should handle the issue of Jamaat-Hefazat with a strong hand as the organisations were “trying to make the country a mini-Pakistan.”
Ekatturer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee has been engaged in research on Islamist militancy in Bangladesh and its regional and global networks since 2001.
Family members of four of the victims were present at the programme held at the city’s Women’s Voluntary Association auditorium. The committee gave each of the families Tk10,000.