The 20th anniversary of the gruesome August 21 grenade attack on an Awami League rally in Dhaka passed off silently on Thursday without any programme from the party, left in shatters after a student-led upsurge ended former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's 15-year rule.
This is the first time since the 2004 attack that the oldest party of the country failed to take up any visible programme to mark the heinous is on its anti-terrorism rally at Bangabandhu Avenue.
Sheikh Hasina, the then leader of the opposition who later ruled the country for 15 years as the prime minister, was the target.
It happened whenBNP-Jamaat alliance government was in office.
At least 24 people, including Awami League’s women affairs secretary and late President Zillur Rahman’s wife Ivy Rahman, were killed. Three hundred others were also injured. Sheikh Hasina survived but suffered hearing impairment.
Fourteen years later, a Dhaka court sentenced 19 people, including the then BNP government’s state minister for home affairs Lutfozzaman Babar, to death in the grenade attack case.
Tarique Rahman, the eldest son of BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia the party's current acting chairman, and 18 others were sentenced to life in prison for their alleged involvement in the grenade attack.
Marking the day, Awami League and its associate bodies chalked out elaborate programmes across the country even when it was in the opposition.
Tributes were paid to the grenade attack martyrs by placing wreaths at the altar built in their memory in front of the party's Bangabandhu Avenue office in Dhaka.
But in the changing scenario of the country where the AL government has been ousted by a student movement, it seems that no one is there to observe the day.
There has so far been no word even from Sajeeb Wazed Joy who took to his social media platform with statements immediately after his mother Hasina's resignation.
Among those killed in the grenade attack were - the then opposition leader's security guard Lance Corporal (retd) Mahbubur Rashid, Abul Kalam Azad, Rezina Begum, Nasir Uddin Sardar, Atique Sarkar, Abdul Kuddus Patwari, Aminul Islam Moazzem, Belal Hossain, Mamun Mridha, Ratan Shikdar, Liton Munshi, Hasina Mamtaz Reena, Sufia Begum, Rafiqul Islam (Ada Chacha), Mostaque Ahmed Sentu, Md Hanif, Abul Kashem, Zahed Ali, Momen Ali, M Shamsuddin and Ishaque Miah.
Those who suffered serious splinter injuries included Sheikh Hasina, Amir Hossain Amu, Abdur Razzak, Suranjit Sengupta, Obaidul Quader, Advocate Sahara Khatun, Mohammad Hanif, Prof Abu Sayeed, and AFM Bahauddin Nasim.
Meanwhile, hearings on appeals against the trial court judgment are yet to be completed in the High Court.
