2010 Blast At CJ's Residence: Court orders fresh probe into case

A Dhaka court has ordered reinvestigation into a case filed in connection with 2010 Molotov cocktail attack on then chief justice ABM Khairul Haque's residence.

The order was made over eight months after the police had submitted a final report discharging five accused BNP men.

Three police officials probed the incident as investigation officers (IOs) and the last one submitted the final report.

On March 2 this year, Additional Public Prosecutor Taposh Kumar Paul filed a petition seeking reinvestigation of the case. The prosecutor brought an allegation that the IO, being influenced by the accused, submitted the final report without uncovering the truth.

"The case should be reinvestigated as the investigation officer did not carry out the investigation properly even though the names of the accused were mentioned in the FIR,” he wrote.

Judge Kamrul Hossain Mollah of the Metropolitan Sessions Judge's Court of Dhaka accepted his prayer and directed the Police Bureau of Investigation to carry out an investigation and submit the report on April 20.

Of the five accused, Moazzem Hossain Alal was the president of Jatiyatabadi Jubo Dal, Habib-un-Nabi Khan Sohel was the president of Swechchhasebak Dal and Sultan Salauddin Tuku was the Chhatra Dal president. 

The other two were then human rights affairs secretary of BNP Nasir Uddin Asim and Akhter Hamid Paban, son of then BNP secretary general Khandker Delwar Hossain.

compound of the official residence of Justice Khairul on Hare Road around 8:30pm on November 18, 2010.

The following day, Jafar Ali, a sub-inspector of Ramna Police Station, filed the case.

He said he had conducted raids in the neighbourhood of the CJ's residence and appointed an undercover agent to arrest the offenders.

He learnt from the agent that Alal, Paban, Sohel, Asim and Tuku were seen in Ramna Park, Bailey Road, Shahbagh, Nayapaltan and Kakrail areas in the evening of November 18, the complaint read.

The suspects along with their party men might have hatched a conspiracy to explode crude bombs and mount pressure on judges ahead of the hearing of the case regarding Khaleda Zia's cantonment residence scheduled for November 29, 2010, according to the complaint.

SI MA Jalil of the police station was appointed as the investigation officer of the case. Later, the case was transferred to the Detective Branch of police, and SI Ashraful Islam of DB (south division) was appointed as the IO of the case on December 18, 2010.

The IO was changed again in July 2012. Mumin Khan, an SI working in the bomb disposal unit of Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime Unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, was given the charge.

In his final report submitted to the court on June 18, 2016, Mumin said accused Nasir Uddin Asim was abroad on the day of the incident and he did not find any evidence to support that the other accused were involved in the attack.

"It was not possible to find out the real culprits even after appointing another undercover agent. The case will be revived following a court directive if the real culprits were traced or arrested in future,” he said.

The IO, however, observed that the BNP and its allies had taken up a plan to create anarchy in the country and put pressure on judges ahead of Khaleda's case hearing.

Contacted, Masud Ahmed Talukder, a lawyer of the accused, told The Daily Star yesterday that his clients were accused on suspicion only, and the investigators did not find any evidence of their involvement.

According to the case documents, two crude bombs exploded in the

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