Some questions still unanswered

It was no ordinary day. With these mortar launchers and angry jawans on patrol, the Pilkhana BDR headquarters was virtually a combat zone in the morning of February 25, 2009. A bloody mutiny broke out on that day and ended up claiming lives of 57 army officers. Photo: File Photo

Even after five years of the BDR mutiny at the Pilkhana headquarters of the force, questions regarding the reasons, based on assumptions, behind the 2009 carnage are being raised.
The lower court has already delivered its verdict in the carnage case.
Investigators, who intensively interrogated the accused, including mastermind DAD Towhidul Alam, did not find any foreign and political links with the incident.
But the family members of some slain army officers believe the reasons that have been cited at different times to explain the mutiny are not the real ones.
After an investigation that took a year and four months, the Criminal Investigation Department found that the mutiny was staged based on some pent-up resentment among BDR soldiers regarding some of their demands.
CID's Abdul Kahar Akand, also the investigation officer of the case, in his post-investigation briefing said the investigation could not find any political or foreign link to the bloody mutiny.
"We do not think it was only for corruption (which is not true) and demands that such a large number of officers were killed," Nehrin Ferdousi, widow of Col Mujibul Haque, Dhaka commander of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) “fair price shops” programme, run during the term of the last caretaker government to curb price hikes of essentials.
Corruption in the programme is alleged to have been the main reason for the mutiny.
"Why the killing of the officers was done out of sheer brutality and who were behind it are questions among many of us who have lost our husbands," she added.