The Sector Commanders’ Forum (SCF) formally accepted the resignation of chairman AK Khandker yesterday nominating sector commander KM Shafiullah to take his place, and then expelled the liberation warrior over his controversial book.
The SCF cancelled Khandker’s primary membership at its executive committee meeting, said a press statement released yesterday signed by SCF acting secretary general Harun Habib.
Air Vice-Marshal (retd) AK Khandker, who was the deputy chief of the liberation forces in the Independence War, resigned as chairman of the SCF Wednesday evening apparently after coming under fire from both treasury and opposition bench lawmakers for claims made in his recent book, “1971: Ins and Outs”. The book was published by Prothoma Prokashan.
The meeting said that Khandker, through his book, stood against the basic and well-established facts of the liberation war, the declaration of independence and the country’s constitution.
Khandker had ignored SCF leaders’ repeated urges to change the content deemed incorrect following the publication of the book, the meeting said.
The Sector Commanders’ Forum said the acts in question deemed Khandker punishable by the organisation.
SCF members have slammed parts of Khandker’s book and were to issue a formal position statement at yesterday’s meeting. But two days before the meeting, Khandker resigned.
In the book, Khandker claims Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had uttered “Joy Pakistan” at the end of his historic March 7 speech in 1971.
Yesterday’s SCF meeting, chaired by forum vice-chairman Abu Osman Chowdhury, termed the book a planned provocation against the concrete history of the liberation war. It said Khandker and his publisher were guilty of deliberately distorting history.
The statement said Khandker portrayed aspects of the liberation war negatively, accusing him of trying to mislead his readers about Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s historic March 7 speech, the declaration of independence and other well-established truths.
The meeting said Khandaker had lost the moral right to lead a national forum like SCF, which is based on the history and spirit of the liberation war, by publishing distorted information.
He had opposed the forum’s charter, image and ethics, and the book was an encouragement to anti-liberation and anti-Bangladesh groups at home and abroad, the meeting said.
