Mystery, controversy and debate continue to deepen surrounding the list of people who rights body Odhikar claimed had died on May 6 in Motijheel in a Hefazat-e-Islam rally.
The rights body has disowned the list that police have recently made public through media.
On June 10, Odhikar published a report in which it claimed that 61 people had been killed in a drive in the early hours of May 6, which police conducted to clear the Shapla Chattar area at central Dhaka of Hefazat activists, who had gathered there for the rally.
Police have since been asking Odhikar for the list but the rights body continued to refuse, saying the safety of the families of those mentioned in the list might be threatened.
On August 10, detective police arrested Adilur Rahman Khan, a former deputy attorney general and secretary of the rights body, for fabricating facts about the police action, under section 57 of the Information and Communication Technology Act 2006. The next day police raided Odhkar’s office and claimed to have recovered a list from the computers that they seized from the office.
When contacted, Odhikar Director Nasir Uddin Elan on Sunday dismissed police’s claim, saying the list that had been made public, was not the one that its report was based on.
“We do not know where they [police] managed the list from,” Elan said.
He, however, added: “There were many incomplete and draft lists in the computers seized from our office. They might have published one of those drafts or incomplete copies.”
The Detective Branch of police, on the other hand, has termed the list false and fabricated with exaggerated information.
DB Joint Commissioner Md Monirul Islam said: “Although Odhikar claims that 61 people were killed, the list has 60 names. The 10th entry in the list is empty. After investigation, it seemed to us that it was a table-made list. The death toll was intentionally shown higher than the real figure. The list contained false names.”
According to the DB, the list contained the names of three people who Odhikar claimed had been killed but were actually alive. It contained the names of five other people who were killed in Narayanganj and Chittagong. Five other names were mentioned twice.
The DB said the first name in the list was that of Siddiqur Rahman, the driver of a bus requisitioned by police, who was actually killed by Hefazat activists. The 57th name was Kamal Uddin Khan, manager of General Insurance Company, who actually died of cardiac arrest on that night.
The DB also said 19 people on that list never existed: Masum Billah of Narayanganj, serial 12; Lutfor Rahman of Mymensingh, serial 13; Moulana Md Hasan of Narayanganj; Hafej Lokman Hossain of Narayanganj, serial 29; Al Amin of Narayanganj, serial 30; Moulana Jubair of Munsiganj, serial 31; Shafiullah Badal of Gazipur, serial 32; Sirajul Islam of Mymensingh, serial 34; Babu Gazi of Shariyatpur, serial 35; Md Sohel of Comilla, serial 39; Sekandar Ali Fakir alias Ebne Ali Maijuddin Fakir of Bogra, serial 40; Md Sultan of Jatrabari, serial 45; Rajeeb of Demra, serial 46; Moulana Mutiar Rahman of Comila, serial 49; Sbbir of Demra, serial 53; Taher of Demra, serial 54; Abu Sayeed of Demra, serial 55; Jalal Ahmed of Shariyatpur, serial 60; and Sirajul Islam of Comilla, serial 61.
Earlier, the commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police claimed that only 11 people had been killed on the night of May 5.
Ask denies getting list
At a press release on August 16, Odhikar said it had sent copies of the list to the UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the Human Rights Watch, the Amnesty International, the Asian Human Rights Commission, and Ain O Salish Kendra (ASK).
However, Sultana Kamal, executive director of ASK and also the trustee board chairman of Transparency International Bangladesh, said: “We have not yet received any such list.”
When asked about it, Odhikar Director Nasir Uddin Elan said they had sent the list to ASK Chairperson Hamida Hossain through email.
Hamida Hossain said she had received a list in her personal email. “As the list was sent to my personal email, I did not discuss it with Sultana Kamal. I consider that the list was sent on personal capacity.”
