dpa
Dhaka
Deposed Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina and six of her loyalists were accused in a murder case more than a week after she resigned and fled the South Asian country in the face of massive student protests, court officials said on Tuesday.
Amir Hamza, a businessman, filed the case with the metropolitan magistrate court in Dhaka. He accuses Hasina, two of her Cabinet colleagues and senior police officers of being responsible for Abu Sayeed’s killing on July 19.
Hamza asserts that Sayeed died after police opened fire indiscriminately on student protesters in Dhaka’s Mohammadpur neighbourhood, defence lawyer Anwarul Islam said. A judge at the Dhaka court has ordered the local police station to open an investigation into the allegations. Hamza said he volunteered to file the case as part of his civic responsibilities.
Former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan, former transport and bridges affairs minister Obaidul Quader, former chief of the police Abdullah Al Mamun and three other senior police officers were named in the case, lawyers said. More than 500 people were reportedly killed in a month of violence that began with students demanding an end to a discriminatory government job quota system and turned into a mass uprising against Hasina’s government.
Hasina resigned on August 5 and left the country for India by military helicopter, prompting protesters to carry out further attacks on police, as well as the businesses, homes and offices of her loyalists. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus took over as the head of an interim government formed last week. The protesters denounced the former prime minister as an authoritarian ruler and accused her of using excessive force to crack down on protests by deploying police, members of the paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh and army troops.