The BNP-led coalition government wanted to kill most of their intended victims of the August 21 grenade attack on an Awami League rally in the city in 2004, says Samrat Akbar Sabuj, a victim of the attack, to the daily Observer on Wednesday.
Sabuj was among 22 to 25 other victims admitted to the Dhaka Medical College Hospital for treatment.
"The then DMCH authority was reluctant to treat us and some police officials even tried to arrest us from our hospital beds," Sabuj said.
Most of the victims were shifted to the Holy Family Hospital for treatment, he recalled.
Sabuj is still carrying wounds of the gruesome attack with numerous grenade splinters lodged inside his body for the last 14 years.
Sabuj, who cannot walk properly because of injuries he sustained in his limbs, said he, among several other victims, are yet to get compensation from the government.
Losing the working ability of the lone bread-earner, the family members of Sabuj are now reeling under poverty. They want justice and trial of the killers.
Sabuj told this correspondent that he wanted a job or some financial help. Although Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had directed the authority concerned to help the victims of the August 21 grenade attack, he is yet to receive any financial help in the last 14 years.
Twenty four people, including Ivy Rahman, wife of former president Zillur Rahman, were killed and over 200 others injured in the grenade attack on an Awami League rally in front of its central office at Bangabandhu Avenue on August 21 in 2004.
The main target of the assault, Awami League President, Sheikh Hasina, now the Prime Minister, escaped the attack but the explosions caused her hearing damage.
The Awami League rally was intentionally disrupted by the carnage while a police investigation into the incident was diverted along other avenues, said CID Additional Deputy Inspector General.
Many people from the then ruling party BNP-led coalition government were involved in the conspiracy.
The then Sub-Inspector Sharif Faruk Ahmed of Motijheel Police Station filed a case in connection with the incident and the then Assistant Superintendent of Police of CID, Abdur Rashid, was assigned as the investigation officer. However, the investigation team tried to divert the case to another direction.
They first tried to trap a youth named Shoibal Saha Partho, before arresting Joj Miah from Noakhali and extracting a false confession that an underworld gang, called the Seven-Star Group, had carried out the attack.
After Awami League came to power in 2009 a probe conducted by Abul Kahar Akand, the then senior superintendent of police, named 30 more people including BNP Senior Vice-Chairman Tarique Rahman, ex-state minister of the Home Affairs Lutfozzaman Babar, BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia's political secretary Harris Chowdhury, Jamaat leader Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed, several officers of DGFI and NSI, and three investigation officers involved in the case.
Akand said 19 of the accused are still at large and that red notices had been issued by the Interpol for those thought to be in hiding abroad.
