Dhaka: A court here Thursday launched the trial of “core culprits” of 2009 BDR carnage after accomplishing the indictment process of 847 suspects for murdering 74 people including 57 army officers serving the paramilitary frontier force.

Metropolitan Sessions Judge Zahoorul Haque ordered the trial process after framing the charges against all the suspects after several days of hearing at the makeshift court at Bakshibazar area in Old Dhaka.

“This is the highest number of accused being tried in a single criminal case . . . I don’t know if so many accused in one case were tried in anywhere at any criminal court in the past centuries,” the judge said as the accused in handcuffs and shackles appeared in prison vans under heavy security vigil from different jails.

Setting August 24 for the next date of hearing the judge added: “You want justice (and) this court will ensure you 100 per cent justice”.

The indictment came as the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) investigations found 827 border guards and 23 civilians to be the main suspects to have hatched the mutiny plots or carrying out the killings.

Two suspects have died

Prosecution lawyers earlier told Gulf News that out of the total 850 suspects, 20 were on the run to be tried in absentia while three others already died natural deaths in the past two years.

Officials, however, said a manhunt was underway to track the 20 fugitives down and expose them before the court on charges of masterminding the mutiny, killing the army officers, taking their families to hostage, arson, looting and attempt to conceal marks of their crimes.

The frontier force witnessed a massive reconstruction campaign with its already changed name, laws, uniform and monogram while these initiatives were aimed at freeing it of the mutiny stigma.

Prosecution lawyers earlier told the court that the rebellious soldiers of the then BDR, now renamed as Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), had taken a secret oath to kill army officers in the frontier force at their Pilkhana headquarters.

Background:

They said the protracted investigations into the country’s “biggest ever criminal case” in terms of number of accused unfolded the tales of conspiracy, murders, looting, arson and other heinous offences.

“The secret meeting was held on February 24, 2009, a day before the mutiny, at the house of BDR soldier Zakaria near their Pilkhana headquarters. (Another) soldier Rafiqul Islam administered the oath of killing the officers,” Kajol earlier told the court.

The CID initially charged 824 suspects including 23 civilians like Nasiruddin Pintu and Torab Ali for the carnage but 26 more BDR soldiers were incorporated later in the list of the main culprits as their role were unfolded during a parallel trial process under the lenient BDR Act by paramilitary courts.

Over 250 police officers with initial assistance of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and British Scotland Yard carried out the investigation during last two years.

The rebellious soldiers at the time of their mutiny claimed a sense of deprivation” prompted them to stage the rebellion while they demanded the frontier force should be freed from “military domination”.

They had also killed eight civilians, eight fellow BDR soldiers, who apparently were opposed to their mutiny, and an army soldier apart from the 57 military officers.

A government committee report said a certain quarter staged the mutiny using a sense of deprivation of the ordinary BDR soldiers but only a few BDR men knew about killing plot.

In line with a Supreme Court directive, the government earlier decided that the BDR soldiers who were directly linked to the killings, looting and arson at Pilkhana headquarters in Dhaka would be tried in a civil court under the civil Penal Code suggesting the death penalty for their crimes.

The apex court suggested the rest be tried under BDR Act that prescribed the highest seven years of imprisonment for ordinary command breach.

The newly enacted BGB Act prescribed death penalties for such mutiny as the BDR Act had kept no provision for trial of mutiny of such extent.

The rebel soldiers staged the rebellion at Pilkhana at the heart of the capital city on February 25, 2009 but the mutiny quickly spread at sector headquarters and regional units of the frontier force across the country but the casualties took place only at the Pilkhana.

A BGB spokesman said under the BDR Act, 11 paramilitary courts so far sentenced to different terms up to seven years of imprisonment on mutiny charges 2,855 rebel soldiers belonging to different units and of them, 961 were at their Pilkhana headquarters as the rebellion took place.

He said members of BDR 57 units were exposed to trial on mutiny charges while the paramilitary courts completed the trial of 50 while 3,109 suspected mutineers still await the trial.