An accused of the BDR carnage case Tuesday claimed that after his arrest, he had been tortured in the custody of Criminal Investigation Department as he rejected the authorities’ offer to testify as a prosecution witness.
Soldier Aiyub Ali, who claimed himself not guilty, told the special court that he had also talked over phone with high officials at the Army Headquarters on the first day of the mutiny.
They were frequently asking him about what was happening inside Pilkhana. But he could not provide them detail information except that the miscreants had pointed gun at then the BDR chief Maj Gen Shakil Ahmed at Darbar Hall who was later killed, the accused said while being cross examined at the court.
Earlier in the day, his wife Nasrina Akhter Sumi as a defence witness told the court that Ayub had returned the residence, inside the Pilkhana, shortly after the mutiny broke out from Darbar Hall on February 25, 2009. “He did not go out of home after that,” she said.
Aiyub said he left the Darbar Hall after some armed men had entered the auditorium around 9:30am. Along with some other soldiers, frightened Aiyub ran for a safer place and for instruction, phoned his former boss Brig Gen Golam Rabbi, who was a deputy director general of BDR that time.
“Sir told me to stay safe and I came back to my quarter around 9:40am. I continuously kept contact with him,” he said. The next morning, his wife went to a safe place with neighbours while Aiyub said he had left Pilkhana around 2:30pm following announcements in loudspeakers to do so.
As prosecutor Mosharraf Hossain Kajol asked him why he had not called his current boss, Aiyub said being the former personal assistant of Golam Rabbani, he had good relation with him.
“Lt Gen Jahangir, former DG of BGB, and Col Mizan among other army officials also talked with me over Rabbani sir’s phone,” he said. “I also phoned my immediate boss Subedar Jahangir, but he could not give me any instruction. There was no situation to phone others.”
Aiyub said after the mutiny, he had joined Pilkhana headquarters on March 1, 2009 and kept discharging duties. On February 19 next year, the sadar Rifles commander-in-charge offered him to be a prosecution witness of the case, he claimed.
“Maj Mazhar told me if I did not agree, I would be fired from job and indicted in the carnage case,” he said adding that he had not accepted the proposal since he did not know details about the killings and arson.
The next day, a CID team picked him up from Pilkhana and he was taken to its headquarters. Aiyub claimed that he had been tortured until March 11.
“While in CID custody, Investigation Officer of the carnage case Senior ASP Abdul Kahar Akand also offered me to be a prosecution witness. But I denied,” he claimed.
The prosecution suggested that Aiyub had named some high rank army officials to get free. The accused refuted the claim.
As the Additional Metropolitan Sessions Judge’s Court 3, set up in the capital’s Bakshibazar, asked, Aiyub gave his phone number. The prosecution then said they would check the call list to know whether Aiyub had talked to the army officials.
The two-day mutiny broke out at the Pilkhana headquarters in the capital on February 25, 2009, killing at 75 people including 57 high and mid ranked army officers deputed to the border force.
Tuesday, one of the prime accused former deputy assistant director Abdul Jalil Sheikh, who was the quarter master of BDR hospital, also gave statement as defence witness.
He told the court that he had been hiding in a store room of the hospital from 10am to 3pm on the first day of mutiny. Some masked rebels appeared there and tried to take him into a car. He resisted and the masked men shot bullets in his left leg. Then he was taken to gate four.
“They took me to Holy Family Hospital in the evening where I was under treatment until March 5, 2009. On that day, Rab 2 members blind folded me and took me to their office,” Jalil claimed. After two months, they produced him before court, he said.
Jalil also presented some documents of treatment he had taken at BSMMU after the alleged torture on him.
The prosecution suggested that he had gone to the gate to join the rebels’ delegation which went to the prime minister’s residence negotiation. Jalil replied, “It is not true.”
