On 15 August 1975, Colonel Hamid, the father of footballer Kaiser Hamid, was given responsibility by Army Headquarters to look after the body of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Without observing any religious principles, Colonel Hamid placed Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s body in a coffin in the very clothes he had been wearing when he was killed, and sent it to Tungipara.

Whose instruction it was to send him to Tungipara, and who blocked the holding of a janaza in Dhaka, no accurate or truthful research has yet been conducted on this. But under Colonel Hamid’s supervision, without regard for religious principles and in such neglect, the founder of the country, the greatest leader Bengali Muslims had produced in a thousand years, was sent away. And the man under whose supervision he was sent away was himself a Bengali Muslim.

In 1971, through the farcical trial of Bangabandhu Mujib in Pakistan, Yahya Khan had tried to have him hanged. Had he been hanged there, it can be said with certainty that no Pakistani soldier would have placed his body into a coffin in that manner. The conduct of the Pakistanis in 1971 itself proves that. Therefore, in Bangabandhu’s case, it was Bengalis who revealed a character even more degraded than theirs.

In the end, everyone knows that Bangabandhu’s ritual washing, coffin, and janaza took place only because of the firm stance taken by the imam of the mosque at his home in Tungipara. And Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was, in that sense, a profoundly fortunate man. He had struggled all his life for the liberation of poor Bengali Muslims. He had created a country for their economic emancipation. And the relief clothes he had begged for from across the world in order to give relief to those people were used to make his shroud. He was washed with a poor man’s soap called “570,” a soap made in Bangladesh for cleaning clothes. For a leader who had dedicated his entire youth to freeing the poor from poverty, what greater fortune could there be than this? Besides, everyone knows what happened at the janaza: the army and police did not allow any other people to come there.

During the Liberation War, in the absence of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib, the President of the Government of Bangladesh, Syed Nazrul Islam served as Acting President and carried out the responsibility of Acting Commander-in-Chief of the Liberation War. Under him were General Osmani, chief of the three forces, along with all the sector commanders.

One of the most hateful jail killings in the history of the world was the jail killing that took place in Bangladesh on 3 November 1975. On whose instruction this killing was carried out has, in the true sense, still not been uncovered. And in this killing, Bangladesh’s first Acting Commander-in-Chief of the Liberation War, Acting President Syed Nazrul Islam, wartime Prime Minister Tajuddin Ahmad, and two other national leaders, Mansur Ali and Kamaruzzaman, were murdered.

At that time, the people prepared to hold the janaza of these four national leaders at the south gate of Baitul Mukarram. And at the Curzon Hall end of Suhrawardy Udyan, beside the graves of three national leaders, graves were also being dug that day for these four national leaders. The police and army stopped the digging of those graves. They also stopped the preparations for the janaza at the south gate of Baitul Mukarram.

The bodies of the four national leaders were also taken to their respective homes. When Tajuddin Ahmad’s body was taken to his house, within a short time, Mahila Parishad leader Maleka Begum reached there. From her own mouth too, I heard how the grieving family was thinking of preparing to remove the shroud that had been sent from the jail, and to carry out the washing and all the other rites anew.

In the meantime, the then DIG of police, E. A. Chowdhury, who, despite being a staunch opponent of independence, had been placed in that post by Bangabandhu, suddenly sent a large number of police under his instruction. They took the body away and kept the family almost under siege.

Under E. A. Chowdhury’s instruction, in exactly the same way, the body of Syed Nazrul Islam, the Acting Commander-in-Chief of the Liberation War, and the bodies of the other two national leaders, Mansur Ali and Kamaruzzaman, were snatched away.

On 15 August 1975, during the attempt to kill Sheikh Fazlul Haque Moni, one of the key organizers of independence, he was injured. In a dying condition, Jubo League leader Mostafa Mohsin Montu took him to Dhaka Medical College. Sheikh Fazlul Haque Moni died at Dhaka Medical College. From there too, his body was snatched away under the instruction of E. A. Chowdhury.

Although Kamaruzzaman’s body was sent to his village home, how all the others were buried in Banani remains unknown to this day. The families found the graves only because of the love of ordinary people.

On whose instruction the then DIG of police, E. A. Chowdhury, did this remains unknown. And in this country, there is no way to know these things. Just as everyone knows those who demolished Bangabandhu’s house at No. 32. But on whose instruction it was done remains unknown.

Bangladesh’s struggle for independence began through the Language Movement of 1948. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib, Syed Nazrul Islam, Tajuddin Ahmad, and others came forward from the beginning through this very movement. After Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib gave the Six-Point Programme, he gradually emerged as the principal leader of the Bengali struggle for liberation. And along that path came the Agartala Case. Had the state called Pakistan been able to carry that case through, it could have hanged Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib. It would have succeeded in preventing the creation of Bangladesh.

In 1968, when this case was in its final stage, when the noose was advancing toward Bangabandhu, many major student leaders had already emerged. They too were all among the principal organizers of the independence struggle. But when history turned from 1968 and entered 1969, it was not born of any meticulous design, nor of any plot for human slaughter. Through the strength of the people, by means of a true mass uprising, not only did the government fall that day, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and all the national leaders came out of prison in the manner of heroes. That history is known to all.

And this truth is also known to all: the hero of that mass uprising that day was Tofail Ahmed. And through successfully leading that movement, he too entered the ranks of the great heroes of history. Although it was a collective leadership, how Tofail Ahmed’s leadership accelerated the movement that day, and some of the true incidents behind those events, if the future gives me the opportunity, I may perhaps write one day, to the extent that I know.

However, by not allowing Tofail Ahmed’s janaza to be held with state honors on 1 June, the present state order has, in truth, honored Tofail Ahmed. Through his death, he has proved that he was one among the ranks of the great heroes of independence. Likewise, in the time of Yunus, the creator of the “meticulous design” along whose path this present government has arrived, Matia Chowdhury, the rare fighting woman leader of Bengali Muslims, the only Agnikanya in the history of this country, who too was a great leader of the independence struggle, received not only no state janaza, but not even the soil of a grave in the country they had made independent.

The poet Tridib Dastidar wrote as early as 1990,

Whatever you may say, Bangladesh,
You cannot be trusted,
In your body runs the blood of the father-killer.

Tridib was a homeless, patriotic poet of a Baul temperament. And he was far too full of wounded pride. That is why, toward the motherland, just as toward one’s own birth mother, he spoke those words out of hurt. Let us not even try to find the strength to deny the power of his pen.

Yet, as an ordinary journalist, this much alone comes to mind: history is a seasoned jeweller. It always knows how to keep the bride and the courtesan apart.

Writer: Journalist honored with the highest state award, Editor, Sarakhon, The Present World.