Dhaka, May 07: Bangladesh’s High Court has ordered rehabilitation in five days of 13 Hindu families whose lands were allegedly grabbed by activists of ruling Awami League in southwestern Pirizpur. A two-member High Court bench issued the order asking the police to ensure restoration of the victims’ lands and other property from the grabbers within five days and provide them adequate security afterwards.
The court order came on a writ petition filed by a rights body after a group of minority Hindus raised the allegation of land grabbing by ruling Awami League leaders in Pirozpur, as a judicial investigation was underway to examine identical complaints against workers of the previous rightwing four-party coalition regime of former-prime minister Khaleda Zia.
The bench comprising judges AHM Shamsuddin Chowdhury Manik and Mohammad Delwar Hossain also ordered the officer in charge of the local police station to appear again before the court within a month, and submit a report on compliance with the order.
The same court on April 25 had directed the district police chief or police superintendent and the officer in charge of the local police station to arrest within 48 hours the alleged land grabbers responding to a petition by the rights group Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh.
Pirozpur’s police super Nafiul Islam and officer in charge of local Mathbaria police station Nurul Haque tendered unconditional apology for not complying with the court’s earlier order but told the court that they could not arrest anybody in this connection since no specific case was filed.
The allegations came as a judicial enquiry committee headed by a senior judge was recording statements of the minority Hindus in the southwestern districts as they were exposed to identical repressions during the last Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led four party government with fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami being its key partner.
The repression on minority Hindus at that time sparked wide protests while the ruling Awami League under Sheikh Hasina had promised to expose the culprits of communal repression to justice in her election manifesto. Economist and president of Bangladesh Economic Association Abul Barakat in a study found politically powerful people grabbed most of the land during the BNP-led regime from 2001 to 2006.
The incumbent government, however, enacted a law to return Hindu Property which were confiscated during the 1965 Indo-Pak war, when Bangladesh was eastern wing of Pakistan.
The law is meant to redress the long-disputed law of the Pakistani era, which was widely criticised as a major violation of the minority rights. During the Pakistan period, the law was called as Enemy Property Act.
According to a study conducted by Dhaka University professor, nearly 200,000 Hindu families lost approximately 40,667 acres of land since 2001 until the annulment of the Vested Property Act, considered a “black law”
—Agencies