Ensure that not a single culprit behind arson violence goes unpunished: PM Sheikh Hasina

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Friday asked her party men to give protection to the public lives and property by finding out and handing over the culprits behind arson violence (to the law enforcers).

“If they (BNP-Jamaat) will commit such arson violence in a place, you will have to find out how many BNP or Jamaat men (who are behind it) there and hand them (to the law enforcers),” she said while addressing a discussion arranged by Awami League in the capital.

AL president Sheikh Hasina presided over the discussion held at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre, marking the Jail Killing Day.

The premier asked her party men to be organised in a manner that not a single culprit behind arson violence goes unpunished. “If anyone is caught red-handed while setting fire (to anything), then you will have to throw him into the same fire. The hand that sets fire to anything will have to be burnt….tit for tat. If so, they would learn lessons,” she said.

She urged her party men to build resistance against the arsonists in every area in an organized manner, taking the people on board.

“Now you will have to build resistance against these arsonists in every area, not only in Dhaka city,” she said.

AL general secretary Obaidul Quader, senior leaders Shajahan Khan, Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya and Mirza Azam, and Tajuddin Ahmed’s daughter Simeen Hossain(Rimi) and Syed Nazrul Islam’s daughter Sayeda Zakia Noor Lipi, among others, spoke on the occasion.

On this day in 1975, the killers of Bangabandhu stormed the Dhaka Central Jail in the early hours and assassinated the four national leaders — Tajuddin Ahmed, Syed Nazrul Islam, Captain Mansur Ali and AHM Quamruzzaman — who led the Liberation War in the absence of Bangabandhu in 1971 and led the nation to victory.

A minute’s silence was observed at the beginning of the programme as a mark of respect to all martyrs from the Language Movement, the Liberation War, the August 15, 1975 carnage, the November 3, 1975 Jail Killing, the August 21 grenade attack and other pro-democratic movements.