While the law must take its own course and everything has to be judged strictly from the legal point of view, the question as to how the then four-party alliance government handled the issue can hardly be evaded. The attacks on the Awami League rally which also injured the party's chief and the then leader of the opposition were vicious and barbaric. Yet, the government of the day could not do anything beyond setting up a one-member judicial commission, the report of which was never made public. It was anything but farcical and so was the ostentatious attempt to bring in foreign agencies to probe the crime -- no cooperation was reportedly extended to them.

People have every right to know why there was no progress in the investigation and at what stage it is stuck now. The general query is: how could a crime of such magnitude fail to spur the then government into taking a just and non-partisan stand against the killers?

AL leader SAMS Kibria's assassination in an equally brutal manner on January 27, 2005 only confirmed the truth that the failure to punish the August 21 killers gave all such criminals a kind of impunity. Here, too, not much was heard after a ruling party MP was charge-sheeted for his complicity in the gruesome crime. The question arises, who were working from behind the scenes to make sure that the killers would never be brought to justice?

One may also recall that the immediate past government failed completely to contain religious extremism which resulted in cultural activities coming under a fierce assault by the obscurantist forces. The bombing cases are yet to be solved.

Now, these are all examples of politics becoming devoid of morality and humanity. But such politics cannot have a place in a civilised society. As for now, the perpetrators of the ghastly crimes and their patrons should be brought to light and made to face the due legal processes -- something that they have been able to evade so far.