THERE is plenty to be worried about the recent revelations regarding the grenade attack on the AL leaders on 21 August 2004. The disclosures of a former state minister have brought to light several startling and at the same time disconcerting facts.

It has, for one thing, validated the concerns of the media expressed during the course of investigation that the alliance government was not handling the matter with the import that it deserved. Moreover, there was more than a palpable evidence of an attempt to divert the course of the investigation, if not of sweeping it under the carpet altogether.

Not only was the main opposition party made to look as the likely perpetrator, there was also a dubious effort to implicate some of its leaders. The report of the one-man probe body, set up to investigate the incident, has not been made public. We are not sure whether the report was able to give a pointer towards which the government agencies could focus their attention on to identify the real culprits.

The statement of the erstwhile state minister for information, exposing the purported involvement of people in the then government, is highly alarming. It seems that the findings of the main investigating agency and discovery of 'George Mia' were nothing but red herrings to mislead the public. It was a diabolical exercise to divert the public attention from one of the most heinous terror acts in Bangladesh. And this is what is most disturbing. Persons belonging to the ruling coalition and holding public office, according to recent reports, were not only complicit in the blast, they had been criminally involved in covering up the act.

One is not certain that we would have ever known the truth had there not been the changes of 1/11. We demand that the caretaker government spare no efforts to find the real culprits behind the incident and also bring to book those who colluded with the culprits to contort the course of justice.