BNP Standing Committee Member Gayeshwar Chandra Roy on Sunday dismissed media reports of a list of 500 policemen being prepared by the party, terming it a rumour.
The BNP leader was addressing a protest rally in front of the party's Naya Paltan office on Sunday.
Earlier, several BNP leaders told the Dhaka Tribune that the party had listed 500 policemen who were allegedly involved in political repression and brutality, disruption of opposition programs and activists, enforced disappearances, and killings over the past few years.
The party formed a committee on May 23 to prepare the list and sought information from affected BNP activists and their families across the country.
Denying the existence of such a list, Gayeshwar said: “Why do we need to compile a list of the police personnel? The police will reveal who did what when this government steps down, just like what happened after the fall of the Ershad government.”
He went on to say that the government would circulate false reports to strengthen the morale of the police officers. “These news stories are coming through the media in such a way that they seem true, but they are not,” the BNP leader said.
On June 3, BNP Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi at a press conference said that his party had started gathering records of rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and prosecutions in fictitious cases, and details of the people behind those incidents since 2009.
He added that they had formed a 14-member national-level committee to store those records for the future and share them with local and international rights groups.
According to party sources, the committee collected the names of at least 3,914 individuals until June 21. The list includes police officials at the rank of Deputy Inspector General (DIG), Additional DIG, or Superintendent of Police (SP).
