Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said her government has “substantial evidence” that activists from the opposition parties — Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami — have links to the recent targeted murders in the country, and asserted that the culprits won’t be spared.
Addressing a press conference at her Gonobhaban residence on Wednesday on her return from Saudi Arabia, the Prime Minister said all clues, including the nature of killings and the identity of arrested persons, substantiate that the killers have roots to the BNP-Jamaat nexus.
“As the head of the government I have the information about their [the opposition’s] linkage with the killings and we never say anything without checking facts,” she said. “Killers will not be spared,” she added.
A number of bloggers, secularists, activists and members from minority communities were killed in Bangladesh in recent months. In the latest of such incidents, Ananda Gopal Ganguly, a Hindu priest, was hacked to death in the southwestern Jhenaidah district.
While speaking in Parliament earlier in the day, Ms. Hasina said the killers won’t make any political gains out of their actions as “none of them can change the country’s democratic course”.
Meanwhile, two officials from the High Commission of India in Dhaka met the family members of Ganguly, and visited the place where he was killed on Tuesday.
First Secretary (Political and Information) Rajesh Uike and First Secretary (Consular) Ramakant Gupta told reporters that they hoped police will bring the killers to justice soon.
