"The government's attitude in the last two days made it clear that criminals harboured by the BNP-Jamaat coalition and patronised by Prime Minister Khaleda Zia tried to kill Dr Azad in a planned way," Hasina alleged at a press conference at the Dhanmondi office of the main opposition Awami League (AL).

The reaction of Hasina, also president of the AL, came a day after prime minister Khaleda Zia yesterday blamed the party for the attack on Azad, a professor of Bangla at Dhaka University, near Bangla Academy on Friday.

Khaleda in her speech to a rally in Basabo alleged that the AL carried out the attack to create panic among people ahead of its hartal.

"The prime minister in her usual manner tried to shift the blame onto the Awami League once again," Hasina said, adding the comment was bent on saving the real assailants.

"It's clear from the writings of Dr Azad who were angered by him and masterminded the attack to silence his outspoken criticisms."

Referring to the demand for a ban on his latest work, Pak Sar Zamin Saad Baad, by Jamaat legislator Delwar Hossain Sayedee, Hasina said since then the writer, who never sided any political party, was receiving death threats.

She alleged that a bomb attack ripped through the shrine of Hazrat Shahjalal (R) in Sylhet days after Sayedee criticised a function there.

She remarked that the attack was an attempt by the anti-liberation forces to avenge their defeat in Bangladesh's liberation war against Pakistan in 1971.

"In recent days, Dr Azad himself expressed fears of attack on him by the communal forces," Hasina said.

Condemning the grisly attack with butcher's knife, Hasina demanded formation of a neutral people's inquiry commission to uncover the motive for the attack and unmask the real criminals. She asked the government not to harass innocent people framing them in false cases.

The AL chief was also critical of the prime minister for barring her from visiting Azad at the Combined Military Hospital in Dhaka.

"Even people going to the hospital to donate blood to Dr Azad was stopped," she said.

"Why does the government want to conceal the latest condition of the injured educationist who is fighting for life at the hospital?" she asked.

She urged the CMH authorities to broadcast regular bulletins on the latest condition of Azad.

Asked whether the AL would announce a programme protesting the attack on Azad, Hasina said her party had already expressed solidarity with the movement of Dhaka University teachers and students and would lend all-out support to them.

On the premier's comment that she would not step down a day before the expiry of the coalition's tenure, Hasina said the prime minister made similar remarks after the February 15, 1996 'sham polls'.

Frontline AL leaders were present at the press conference.