Who was Joj Miah?
Joj Miah was a low profile criminal who was framed for the August 21, 2004 grenade attack by the BNP-led government. On instructions from the former state minister for Home Affairs, Lutfozzaman Babar, Crime Investigation Department (CID) officials cooked up the Joj Miah story to divert the investigation into a different path. As a result, the young man who had never seen a grenade in his life, was forced to give a false confession in June 2005 that an underworld gang, called the Seven-Star Group, led by Subrata Bain Shuvro, carried out the grenade attack. However, investigation into the case revealed that the deadly attack had no connection to Joj Miah and the Seven Star Group, but was actually orchestrated by a militant group Huji, influential leaders of the then ruling BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami, along with a band of senior officials in the government machinery, including the home ministry, police, Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), National Security Intelligence (NSI) and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).
Where is Joj Miah now?
Joj Miah, alias Jalal now drives a private car somewhere in the capital. In September 2014, he gave his witness accounts and details of the harassment he went through by CID officials to court describing how some of them had orchestrated a cooked-up story in connection with the August 21 attack on an Awami League rally in 2004. He said, to make him look like the key player in the two cases filed over the attack, the top officials of the CID had threatened to implicate him in many false cases, kill him in a “crossfire” and endanger the lives of his family members. How the investigators became the accused Fresh investigation revealed that the investigators during the BNP-led government deliberately derailed the investigation. Police did not take proper security measures at the venue to facilitate the attackers. They baton charged the rally after the grenades were hurled. Investigators did not seize the unexploded grenades as evidence. Although Mufti Hannan was arrested in another case, investigators did not interrogate him for the attack. The Joj Miah story was cooked up after Hannan was arrested. Later, all of the investigators, involved officials of police, NSI and DGFI were made accused in the case.
Was Tarique Rahman involved?
According to the charge sheet of the case, the militants met with BNP Senior Vice-Chairman Tarique Rahman twice after they brought the grenades and bullets from Pakistan. They met Tarique at Hawa Bhaban, Banani in Dhaka in early 2004. In August, 2004 they met with Tarique again, where BNP and Jamaat leaders, high officials of NSI, DGFI were present. Tarique allegedly assured them of full support.
Involvement of HujiB and Hannan
Militants from Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Bangladesh brought grenades and bullets from Pakistan to carry out terror attacks in Bangladesh. The organisation chief Mufti Abdul Hannan and his allies chalked out the plan to carry out the grenade attack on August 21. Mufti Hannan was a veteran of the Afghan war. He returned to Bangladesh with a mission to establish Shariah law in the country. In collusion with several militant organisations, he launched several attacks to kill Awami League leaders branding the party as an opponent of Islam. The investigators said that Kashmiri separatists and a designated terrorist group Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Tehrik-e-Jihad-e-Islami--one of the Kashmiri Mujahideen group, Lashkar-e-Taiba—an Islamic terrorist organisations in South Asia which operates from Pakistan, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Myanmar’s Rohingya organisation--Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO) had close connection with the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Bangladesh.
