Editorial
Hearing on Bangabandhu murder case
Let justice be done and let rule of law prevail
The Supreme Court is today scheduled to hear the review petitions of the men condemned to death in 1998 for the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the members of his family on August 15, 1975. The hearings can be considered a resumption of the process of justice for the first time in the past six years because of the fact that during the entire period of the BNP-led coalition government the case remained in abeyance. It is still a mystery why the prosecution of the case had to remain suspended all these years, given that the case merited a speedy and judicious resolution in order for the nation to move on. One explanation, and quite a credible one at that, is that the erstwhile authorities tended to politicise a case that clearly ought to have been dealt with in terms of the law. It remains a matter of considerable shame for the country that the assassins of the country's founding father were protected through a so-called indemnity ordinance for a long period of twenty-one years. Precisely the reverse ought to have happened, in this case a speedy hauling up of the assassins before the law and a swift, judicious disposal of the case. That it took an Awami League government, post-1996, to move to repeal the ordinance and let the rule of law resume its normal course was proof again that earlier governments that could have done the job simply did not and only helped lengthened the agony of the nation. The Awami League government of Sheikh Hasina, to its credit, went for a trial of the accused under the normal law of the land instead of taking recourse to a special tribunal. The job it began, however, came to a full stop once its rivals returned to power at the October 2001 elections. It was at that point that what was before 1996 a clear case of political suppression gave way to judicial embarrassment, with judges unwilling, for reasons they did not quite explain, to preside over the case. We would like to believe that Bangladesh's higher judiciary is not politically motivated. But when we consider the manner in which the Bangabandhu murder trial was pushed repeatedly aside in the years of the last government and justice was thereby prevented from being done, we cannot but raise quite a few questions about the motives of those who exercised political authority in those times. Hopefully, such a period has now come to an end and we as a nation will have a real chance to see the Bangabandhu murder trial through to the end. Meanwhile, it will be our request to the chief justice of the Supreme Court that in future, whenever judges feel embarrassed about handling cases, they provide the nation with the reasons.. It is not enough for judges to express embarrassment without letting the nation in on the grounds for their embarrassment.
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