Bangladesh’s interim government said it will “soon” begin a reinvestigation and fair trial of the 2009 mutiny in the paramilitary force Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), which left 74 people dead, including 57 army officers serving in the force. | Photo Credit: Reuters
Bangladesh Interim Government on Monday (September 2, 2024) said it will “soon” begin a reinvestigation and fair trial of the 2009 mutiny in the paramilitary force Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), in which 74 people, including 57 army officers serving in the force, were killed.
Lieutenant General (retired) M Jahangir Alam Chowdhury, adviser on home and agriculture affairs to the interim government, said as a civilian and a former military member, he was committed to ensuring justice in this tragic incident.
“The process of proper reinvestigation and fair trial of the BDR massacre will begin soon,” he told media after a meeting with Swedish Ambassador to Dhaka Reto Siegfried Rengli at his office here.
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The revolt began on February 25-26, 2009, when army officers refused to accept the demands of BDR jawans. The rebel soldiers revolted at the BDR’s Pilkhana headquarters in Dhaka and it soon spread to the Frontier Force’s sector headquarters and regional units across the country.
The revolt involved paramilitary soldiers turning their guns on their commanders, shooting them at close range or hacking them to death, hiding their bodies in sewers and hastily dug graves, and humiliating their terrified family members by holding them hostage in barracks. 74 people, including 57 army officers, were killed in the revolt.
As part of a massive rebuilding drive, the government in 2012 renamed the mutiny-tainted BDR as Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) and changed its logo, uniform, flag and monogram to free the force of the stigma of mutiny.
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Mr Alam, who previously served as BGB chief, said, “Not only as an adviser but also as a former army member and a common citizen, I want a fair trial of the BDR massacre.”
His remarks came at a time when there were growing demands for a reinvestigation, especially on social media, even though a special three-judge high court bench in 2017 had upheld the death sentence of 139 BDR soldiers following a trial in a lower court.
The trial court had awarded death penalty to 152 BDR personnel and two civilians and life imprisonment to 158 others in the case. The case is pending before the apex appellate division of the Supreme Court for review.
The accused were tried under charges of plotting to rebel, torturing and killing their officers, looting their belongings or taking their family members captive during the two-day mutiny. They killed 57 army officers, eight civilians, eight BDR soldiers who opposed the mutiny and one army soldier.
Legal experts had earlier described it as Bangladesh’s biggest ever criminal trial, in which nearly 800 former paramilitary personnel were accused of killing 74 people.
The rebel soldiers revolted over what they said was “deprivation”, which took place during the annual darbar or meeting of the common soldiers with top officials. The then BDR chief Major General Shakeel Ahmed was the first victim of the revolt.
The mutiny took place a few weeks after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government came to power in elections in December 2008. In 2012, Bangladesh completed another phase of mutiny trials, with 11 paramilitary courts sentencing 6,011 rebel soldiers from 57 units to up to seven years in prison under the relatively lenient BDR Act.