Court orders probe into 1971 murder charges against Nizami, Mujahid

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A freedom fighter Monday filed a case against 13 people including four senior leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh on charges of murder and arson in 1971.
Mozaffar Ahmed Khan, a sector-2 freedom fighter, filed the case with the court of additional chief judicial magistrate Ashiqul Khobir.
The magistrate later in the day ordered the officer-in charge of Keraniganj police station to take the case into account and open an investigation, reports bdnews24.com.
Jamaat chief Motiur Rahman Nizami, secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, assistant secretary general Abdul Kader Molla and Mohammad Qamaruzzaman are among the accused.
Some other leaders of the party, which openly gave statements, are also accused in the case.
Many of such statements were published in the Dainik Sangram throughout the nine-month war as a proof of their anti-liberation activities, said independent historians and several fact-finding groups.
According to case details, some 60 to 70 members of Razakar, Al Badr and Al Shams with assignment from the accused Jamaat leaders had allegedly killed a number of freedom fighters in Keraniganj in 1971.
The complainant also charged them with arson in Ghatarchar village in the area during the bloody war against Pakistani military and their local collaborators.
After the war ended, Ghatarchar had been renamed Shaheed Nagar, or 'Neighbourhood of Martyrs', as many freedom fighters were killed in the village by the collaborators of the Pakistani forces in 1971.
The complainant mentioned in his appeal that the accused killed his two nephews when they returned home from the camps of freedom fighters to see their mother on November 25, 1971.
They allegedly killed Osman Gani Khan and Golam Mostafa, after raiding their home and later set the home on fire.
On information, the complainant with his team of freedom fighters tried to approach the house from nearby Kolatia camp but Nizami, Mujahid, Kader Molla and Qamaruzzaman informed the Pakistani forces for action in the meantime, the case alleged.
The collaborators later set fire to the complainant's home and two villages, he said in his appeal to the court.
In the appeal, the complainant said all the accused in the case were behind bars until 1975 but they were released from jail after the then administration on December 31 scrapped the Collaborators Act. The law was enacted in 1972 by the government headed by independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to try the collaborators and the war criminals.