At least 15 convicts including BNP Acting Chairman Tarique Rahman remain absconding even after a trail court convicted 49 people some four years ago for carrying out the August 21 grenade attack on Awami League rally in 2004 that left 24 people dead.
The 18th anniversary of the grenade attack in front of the central office at Bangabandhu Avenue in Dhaka, will be observed on Sunday.
Twenty-two people, including the late President Zillur Rahman's wife Ivy Rahman, were killed and over 200 others injured in the grisly grenade attack on the rally of the then main opposition Awami League on Bangabandhu Avenue during the tenure of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led alliance government.
Awami League President Sheikh Hasina narrowly escaped the attack but the explosions caused her hearing damage.
A Dhaka Court on October 10 in 2018 sentenced 19 people, including former state minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar to death. Nineteen others, BNP acting chairman Tarique Rahman
included, were given life imprisonment.
Former state minister Lutfozzaman Babar, former deputy minister Abdus Salam Pintu and 30 other convicts are now in jail.
Red notices issued against four were identified as -- militant leader Maulana Md Tajuddin Mia, Ratul Ahmed Babu and owner of Hanif Paribahan transport group Mohammad Hanif -- are still effective. Former political adviser to the prime minister Haris Chowdhury died last year during pandemic.
Former NSI director general Brig (retd) Abdur Rahim, a death row convict in the 10-truck arms haul case and also convicted with August 21 grenade attack case died of Covid-19 at a hospital in the capital on August 15 in 2021.
Law enforcers believe Tajuddin is currently in South Africa or Pakistan, Kaikobad in the Middle East, Hanif in India or Malaysia, former army officials ATM Amin and Saiful Joarder in the US and Canada, respectively, Ratul in South Africa, and Anisul Mursalin alias Mursalin and Mohibul Muktakin are in India's Tihar Jail.
Khaleda Zia's son Tarique has been living in the UK for a decade. But talks of extraditing him to Bangladesh by the government are yet to yield any result.
Some 30 others, including Tarique, were added to the list of accused following wider investigations after the Awami League came to power in 2009. A total 52 suspects, including police officers, were implicated in the case.
The number had whittled down to 49 after three other accused, former minister and Jamaat secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid and militant leaders Mufti Abdul Hannan and Sharif Shahedul Alam alias Bipul were hanged after convictions in other cases. Of the 49, a Dhaka court sentenced 19 to life imprisonment and 11 to different jail terms on October 10 in 2018.
