Londoni

Agartala Shoŗojontro Mamla (Agartala conspiracy case) in 1968

In 1968 the government of Pakistan headed by General Ayub Khan, the first military dictator of Pakistan, filed a case against Sheikh Mujib and 34 other members accusing them of conspiring with India to unstable Pakistan. The case is officially called State vs. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and others, but is popularly known by Agartala Shoŗojontro Mamla (Agartala conspiracy case) as the main conspiracy was suggested to have taken place in the Indian city of Agartala in Tripura state state between the Indian party and the 35 accussed.

The Home Department of Pakistan declared through a press-note issued on 6 January 1968 that the government had detected in December 1967 a conspiracy detrimental to the national interest of Pakistan. The press-note disclosed the news of the arrest of 8 persons including 2 CSP officers and alleged that the persons seized were involved in attempting to separate East Pakistan through armed revolt.

The alleged conspiracy was uncovered by the Lt Col Shamsul Alam, who commanded the East Pakistan Detachment of the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) Directorate. It was during this time that an officer of the East Bengal Regiment (name withheld) who was in league with the conspirators made an attempt on the life of Lt Col Alam. Lt Col Alam displayed great bravery and chased the would-be assassins; for his gallantry Lt Col Alam was awarded the Sitara-e-Basalat, the highest award for bravery in action during peacetime.

Through a separate declaration issued on 18 January 1968 the Home Department implicated Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in the conspiracy.

When the first arrests in the case were announced in late December 1967, not a word was said about Mujib's involvement in the conspiracy. The general assumption was that the regime had embarked on a program to discredit the growing Bengali demand for regional autonomy through bringing some senior Bengali officers of the Pakistan civil service, as well as elements of the armed forces, into disrepute.

He was then detained in jail along with many others since 9 May 1966. They were released, only to be arrested again under martial law regulations moments after addressing a rally drumming up support for the Six Points in Narayanganj, sheikh mujib was taken to Dhaka Central Jail under military custody.

Initially the government decided to court martial the accused, but subsequently in the interest of the proper holding of the general elections of 1970 the government resolved to frame charge only against 35 concerned political personalities and high government officials under civil law.

Ayub Khan's hand-picked tribunal

The Agartala Case was a testing ground for Pakistan. Ayub Khan's goal was a snuffing out of Bengali political aspirations. Ironically, the precise reverse of what had been intended happened. Bengali nationalistic sentiments moved ahead by leaps and bounds, and Mujib was to become the voice of a people who would soon go their own free way, in the political sense of the meaning. That was not what Ayub Khan and his fellow travelers thought would happen when they decided to convene a special tribunal, as opposed to the normal judiciary, to try the case.

The hearing of the case started on 19 June 1968 under Sections 121-A and 131. For the first time in seven months the accused were seen in public.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was enrolled as accused No.1. The case was entitled 'State vs Sheikh Mujibur Rahman & others'. The tribunal started proceedings of the case in a highly protected chamber inside Dhaka Cantonment. A charge-sheet consisting of 100 paragraphs against the 35 accused was placed before the tribunal. There were 227 witnesses including 11 approvers. However, 4 approvers were declared hostile by the government.

An intriguing aspect of the story of the Agartala Conspiracy Case was the very large number of state witnesses and approvers arrayed on the side of the government. Between December 1967 and continuing well into the first quarter of 1968, as many as 1,500 Bengalis in various professions had been detained by the authorities on charges of being complicit in the conspiracy. Of them, apart from the 35 accused put on trial, 232 became, or were compelled to become, state witnesses. A good number of Bengali lawyers happily seized the opportunity of being part of the prosecution team.

But as the days and weeks stretched into months, it became obvious that the case was collapsing. A number of state witnesses turned hostile and revealed the inordinate torture they had been subjected to by the authorities before they had agreed to turn approvers. Some of them even broke down in court, leaving all those present in a state of shock. As the proceedings continued, nevertheless, the political movement outside became increasingly more frenzied, with crowds of Bengalis demanding the dropping of the case.

One of the more memorable of moments on the first day of the trial came when Mujib recognized a Bengali journalist sitting a couple of feet away from him, his back turned to the platform reserved for the accused. The incarcerated Bengali leader tried drawing the journalist's attention to him. The journalist pretended not to have heard. Mujib tried again, at which point the journalist whispered: "Mujib Bhai, we can't talk. There are intelligence people all over the place." That was when Mujib exploded. "Anyone who wants to live in Bangladesh," thundered the Awami League leader, "will have to talk to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman." Heads, including those of the judges, turned.

Defence team contains an Englishman

Mujib's courage in adversity was not missed. More tellingly, he had used the name Bangladesh, and not East Pakistan, in speaking of the province. It was an early sign of things to come. At the trial, Mujib's chief counsel was Abdus Salam Khan, who was assisted by, among others, a young Dr Kamal Hossain. Soon to join the defence team would be Sir Thomas Williams, QC, whose services had been obtained by expatriate Bengalis in the United Kingdom. But the British lawyer's stay in Dhaka was not to be a comfortable one for him. Pakistani intelligence constantly tailed him, and at one point held out clear, subtle threats to him. Two months after he landed in Dhaka, Thomas Williams would make his way back to London in August 1968, but not before he had told the tribunal that the trial was a sham and that the case itself was a cooked up one. Khan Bahadur Mohammad Ismail took up the defence of the accused CSP officer Ruhul Quddus while Khan Bahadur Naziruddin appeared for Major Shamsul Alam.

Thomas William, a British lawyer and a member of the British Parliament, filed a writ petition in Dhaka High Court on behalf of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman challenging the legality of the formation of the tribunal. He was assisted in conducting legal proceedings in the special tribunal by Abdus Salam Khan, Ataur Rahman Khan, and others. The government lawyers leading the case were the former foreign minister Manzur Quader and Advocate General TH Khan.

Heading the special three-member tribunal was the Punjabi Justice SA Rahman; and assisting him were two Bengalis, both judges of the East Pakistan High Court, Justice Mujibur Rahman Khan and Justice Maksumul Hakim.

The regime clearly banked on the assumption that the presence of the two Bengalis on the tribunal would lend credence to the case against Mujib and his fellow accused. As time would show, the reality was to be something quite different. The accused were kept away from their families between the time of their arrests and the day the trial commenced inside a small room in the cantonment. Reports later emerged of a number of the accused, including the CSP officers implicated in the case, being subjected to vicious treatment in military confinement. Among those meting out such treatment were a good number of Bengalis in the Pakistan military, especially in its intelligence services. Colonel Mustafizur Rahman, who years later served as foreign minister and then as home minister in the Bangladesh governments of General Ziaur Rahman and Khaleda Zia respectively, would deny that he had been responsible for cruel treatment to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in military custody.

The government was bent on identifying Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as a seperatist and an Indian agent thereby arousing public support against him. But the approvers on the witness-box declared that the government had compelled them by threat and persecution to submit false evidence in its favour. Thus the governmental machination against the accused got exposed. By this time the Sarbadaliya Chhatra Sangram Parishad supported by maulana abdul hamid khan bhasani organised mass movement against the conspiracy of the government and demanded immediate withdrawal of the case and release of all prisoners including Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Killing of Sergeant Zahurul Haq

At a point when the streets of Dhaka became a hot bed of turmoil, Sergeant Zahurul Haq, 17th accused in the case, was mercilessly shot to death while in confinement in Dhaka Cantonment.

On the morning of February 15, 1969, Sergeant Zahurul Haq and Flight Sergeant Fazlul Haq, both Bengalis and charged with anti-state activities in the Agartala Conspiracy Case, were shot by their guards in the Dhaka cantonment. The Pakistan authorities gave out the disinformation that the two men had tried to escape from military confinement, but had been prevented from making good on their plan by the men who guarded them. Sometime after 9 pm on the same day, Zahurul Haq died of his wounds. Fazlul Haq survived, after marathon efforts were expended by his Bengali doctor to save him.

The news of his death ignited passions further, to a point where angry Bengalis attacked the rest-house where the chairman of the tribunal, Justice SA Rahman, and chief lawyer on the government side, Manzur Quader, had been lodged. They fled, and was not to return to the court. The homes of Information and Broadcasting Minister Khwaja Shahabuddin, already notorious as the man behind the 1964 decree banning Tagore from the state media, and a provincial minister, Sultan Ahmed, came under assault.

Some of the files concerning the case were burnt to ashes.

Maulana Bhashani rejects Ayub Khan's proposal

Two days later, on February 17, Field Marshal Ayub Khan contacted the newly constituted Democratic Action Committee, a grouping of opposition politicians led by Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, and suggested convening a round table conference of government and opposition politicians to resolve the impasse.

The Awami League, definitely the strongest component of the DAC, refused to be part of any RTC unless Mujib was freed and the Agartala Case withdrawn. The regime was unwilling to accede to such a demand, and Ayub Khan himself ruled out Mujib's freedom when he termed the on-going case a matter of national security. But he did send out feelers to the imprisoned Mujib about freeing the Awami League leader on parole, and so enabling him to participate in the RTC. Significantly, a number of DAC politicians, too, defended the parole idea, arguing that the issue of dropping of the Agartala Case and an unconditional freeing of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman could be thrashed out at the RTC in Rawalpindi. At that point, hints emerged of Mujib being receptive to the parole offer. The parole question was, however, swiftly shot down by the students, Moulana Bhashani, and, in particular, Mujib's wife Fazilatunnessa. After February 19, 1969, when the army shot Professor Shamsuzzoha, a respected academic of Rajshahi University, the parole issue became irrelevant. Mujib himself rejected anything less than freedom for himself and his co-accused, and a full withdrawal of the Agartala Conspiracy Case.

Case dropped - everyone freed

Buoyed by rumours of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's imminent release, huge crowds of Bengalis milled before the gates to the Dhaka cantonment on February 21, the anniversary of the Language Movement of 1952. Mujib remained a prisoner that day. The government of President Ayub Khan capitulated the next day, February 22 // In the face of the mass movement, the Ayub government was ultimately compelled to withdraw the Agartala Conspiracy Case on 22 February 1969.

In a statement issued in Dhaka, Pakistan's Defence Minister, Vice Admiral AR Khan, informed the country that the Agartala Conspiracy Case was being withdrawn and all the accused in the case were being released unconditionally.