Odhikar, a human rights organization, has published a list of people allegedly killed during the Awami League-led government crackdown on May 5 and 6, 2013 centring a rally of Hefazat-e-Islam arranged at Shapla Chattar in Motijheel.
The list was published on the Facebook page of the organization on Monday.
“In 2013, Odhikar conducted a fact-finding mission into that massacre committed by the security forces and published a report with 61 deaths. Due to publishing that report, the Awami League government filed a case against the then Odhikar’s Secretary Adilur Rahman Khan and the Organization’s sitting Director ASM Nasiruddin Elan under section 57 of the draconian Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act, 2006 (amended 2009)”, said the Facebook post.
“The fascist Awami League government had commenced heightened forms of repression on Odhikar and its leaders since 2013 through persecution, surveillance, harassment by the authorities, and smear campaigns by pro-government media outlets. After more than a decade of judicial harassment, on September 14, 2023, the Dhaka Cyber Tribunal judge AM Zulfikar Hayat pronounced the judgment and sentenced Adilur Rahman Khan and ASM Nasiruddin Elan to two years in prison with TK10,000 fine each, under the ICT Act, for publishing a fact-finding report on extrajudicial killings.”
“After 31 days of incarceration in Dhaka Central Jail, Keraniganj, on 15 October, both were released on bail granted by Justice Md Emdadul Haque Azad of the High Court Division of the Supreme Court,” reads the post.
Odhikar's Adilur Rahman gets two-year jailOdhikar urges the interim government to immediately form an independent inquiry commission headed by a Supreme Court judge and conduct an impartial investigation into the extrajudicial killings committed on May 5 and 6 of 2013 and bring the perpetrators to justice.
Odhikar's report claimed that 61 people died in the wee hours of May 6 when the law enforcers flushed several thousand Hefajat activists out of the Shapla Chattar in the capital's Motijheel. The government, however, put the number of deaths at 13.
Briefing the press at the media centre of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) on August 10, 2013, Monirul Islam, the then joint commissioner of DMP, said no lethal weapons were used to drive the Hefajat men out of the Shapla Chattar.
Law enforcers only used tear gas shells, sound grenades and water cannons to disperse the Hefajat men, he added.
On the pictures used in the Odhikar report, Monirul said though the report was based on the incidents of that night, some pictures were of those who had died earlier in the day (May 5), and some were of people who are still alive.
