20th anniv of Aug 21 grenade attack passes without prog

The 20th anniversary of the gruesome August 21 grenade attack on an Awami League rally in Dhaka passed off silently on Wednesday without any programme from the party, left in shatters after a student-led upsurge ended former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's 15-year rule, reports UNB.
This is the first time since the 2004 attack that the oldest party of the country failed to take up any visible programme to mark the heinous is on its anti-terrorism rally on Bangabandhu Avenue.
Sheikh Hasina, the then leader of the opposition who later ruled the country for 15 years as the prime minister, was apparently the target.
It happened when BNP-Jamaat alliance government was in office.
At least 24 people, including Awami League's women affairs secretary and late President Zillur Rahman's wife Ivy Rahman, were killed. Three hundred others were also injured. Sheikh Hasina survived but suffered hearing impairment.
Fourteen years later, a Dhaka court sentenced 19 people, including the then BNP government's state minister for home affairs Lutfozzaman Babar, to death in the grenade attack case.
Tarique Rahman, the eldest son of BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia and the party's current acting chairman, and 18 others were sentenced to life in prison for their alleged involvement in the grenade attack.
Marking the day, Awami League and its associate bodies chalked out elaborate programmes across the country even when it was in the opposition.
Tributes were paid to the grenade attack martyrs by placing wreaths at the altar built in their memory in front of the party's Bangabandhu Avenue office in the capital.