Belonging to a genre of politicians familiar with frequent short shrift, Hasina could have had a subliminal premonition of the coming danger, and seemed prepared to be arrested. Traumatised by many personal tragedies, she couldn't but be an out and out fatalist and was, thus, least stirred by the bizarre drama leading to her arrest and the hasty arraignment in the court.

In the meantime, ignoring the emergency, there were protesters who thronged the court premises and took to the streets to chant slogans demanding Hasina's release. Demonstrations condemning the arrest are reported also from across the world. The Western diplomats located in Dhaka gave their cautious reaction, particularly stressing Hasina's legal protection. The sporadic agitations may only be a prelude to a storm brewing up. Significantly, Begum Zia tried to reach out to her former opponent by demanding the latter's immediate release.

Hasina's AL was indirectly the catalyst for the political changes of January11, and the party took the change to be their victory. It is an irony that the party is at the discretion of an entity of its making. The public is nonplussed by the party's reversal of fate, culminating in the arrest of its chief and key office bearers. What went wrong with the AL's cosy equation with a dispensation it supported, and helped to bring in?

There are gray areas in the power game, which even a consummate politician like Sheikh Hasina failed to spot. In politics, Sheikh Hasina has never been an armchair begum or a drawing room winner, and couldn't, thus, be an acolyte of the set-up now wielding power.

In her zeal, she forgot the virtue of saving one's own self first before launching the frontal assault. She seemed oblivious to the complexity and sensitivity of the present political milieu. That proved fatal for her, and she earned enough of the authority's ire to be cut down to size.

Hence, Hasina's present predicament of being put behind bars. The dragnet she is entangled in is very intricately woven, and there is little chance of her being able to come out of it. Unless some miracle takes place, her political future can be taken to be sealed.

However, Sheikh Hasina has nothing to lose afresh, because she has already lost so much! But the AL, the country's largest and oldest party, which spearheaded our independence war, is likely to be orphaned without her.

The party's future is so inextricably linked to Hasian's political fate that the AL cannot go without wide scale negative impact after this seismic event of her incarceration. Neither can the country's body politic remain unscathed, with a tectonic shift in national polities imminent.

But what about the criminal and corruption charges leveled against her? We are told that she has been apprehended in connection with only one out of thirteen cases pending against her.

Yes, it's a moral question that must be addressed in due earnestness. We cannot agree more with some stalwarts of the present dispensation when they talk of the due course of the law of the land in dealing with anyone, including the most powerful. They are absolutely right. But then, our people are not a bunch of cretins, and their comprehension of the "intent" involved is unique.

They are the same people who just didn't raise a question about the conspiracy factor of the infamous Agartala "conspiracy" case, when its drama was enacted for Bangabandhu, because they exactly knew what it had aimed at. The rest is the history. Yet, for the sake of justice, we would like to plead for the legal procedure to be followed in the matter of the allegations against Sheikh Hasina.

If she is found guilty in a fair trial, she will have to run the gauntlet. But the key point here is to ensure that "fairness." Because of the manner in which she has so far been dealt with, she as well as her close associates nourish profound doubt that fairness will be adhered to -- given the fact that a measure of politics is already mixed up with the interim government's commendable drive against crime and corruption.

Or else how does an unknown group of people rejoice at the arrest of Hasina in spite of emergency? How do the so-called reformists carry out their activities even when indoor politics is banned? How do the hopefuls try their hand in making or organising new parties?

To make possible a utopian society, can we expect the angels to descend from their Olympian height to a pedestrian low? To make the society run and the polity function we perhaps have to ultimately rely on the same wrong-doers provided they are repentant after being indicted. Humankind is an admixture of good and bad, and Allah Almighty's creation is like that. Its mystery is best known to him.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.