‘Hasina’s people’ flee Bangladesh, fearing reprisal and prosecution

Several ministers and security personnel closely linked to ex-PM Sheikh Hasina are on the run as Bangladeshis seek their capture

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Protesters storm then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s palace in Dhaka on August 5. Photo: TNS

Published: 6:00pm, 3 Sep 2024

About three weeks after then Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country last month, AHM Shamsuddin Chowdhury Manik, a former Supreme Court judge reportedly paid 15,000 Bangladeshi takas (US$125) to an underground network to help him cross the border illegally into India.

He was spotted and apprehended by Bangladesh border guards and villagers and despite pleading for his captors to release him, was handed over to police, who arrested him on charges of attempted illegal border crossing.

Manik was jailed on August 24, and on the same day, a mob attacked him violently, leaving one of his testicles ruptured and requiring hospital treatment.

“It is easy to understand why people directed their anger at Manik,” Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman of the Capital Punishment Justice Project, which has been documenting rights violations in Bangladesh for more than 15 years, told This Week in Asia.

He added that the Hasina regime had used the judiciary as a repressive tool to punish dissent. “Manik was among those judges who acted as retributive hands that the deposed regime used to deny judicial remedies to the victims who had faced arbitrary incarcerations. Those judges became symbols of injustice in Bangladesh.”