Human rights group Odhikar has claimed 61 people were killed, and many more injured during the combined force drive at Motijheel Shapla Chattar on May 6, which was launched to drive away Hefazat-e-Islam activists from the capital.
In its report issued Monday, the rights group said: “Odhikar’s fact finding activities have, to date, found the names of 61 people who were killed.”
However, the report did not contain the list, nor did it describe how the names had been collected. It did include interviews of three people who claimed their relatives were killed in the drive and two Hefazat activists who claimed to have been injured.
The latter two and several others, claiming to have been at the scene, described seeing many dead bodies to the rights group, according to the report.
A list from Dhaka Medical College Hospital morgue included in the report showed 16 bodies including two policemen, two BGB men and 11 civilians having been in the morgue that day but the report did not identify any of the deceased as Hefazat members.
The official position of the government is that there were zero fatal casualties in the drive, although a total of 11 people were killed on that day in clashes, during Hefazat’s Dhaka siege programme.
The Odhikar report said that almost ten thousand members of the combined forces of police, Border Guard Bangladesh and Rab attacked Hefazat members with bullets, tear gas, sound grenades and boiling water.
Police later filed a total of 26 cases in three police stations against a total of 1,862 people who were named and against 133,500 who remained unnamed. Odhikar claimed these cases gave law enforcement agencies an excuse “to misuse their power against the civilian population, and violate human rights.”
