Ganajagaran redundant now: Menon

Workers Party leader Rashed Khan Menon has said Ganajagaran Mancha, a platform floated 1-and-half years ago by bloggers demanding death to all war criminals, has lost its appeal. Menon, also the civil aviation and tourism minister, was commenting on the police action against Mancha activists on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in Shahbagh following the Supreme Court verdict reducing the capital punishment of Jamaat-e-Islami leader Delawar Hossain Sayedee to prison until death for war crimes. ‘Mancha no longer has that appeal among the public,’ Menon said. A five-member SC bench, led-by Chief Justice M Muzammel Hossain, on Sept 18 handed down the punishment to Sayedee differing the verdict passed by International Crimes Tribunal (ICT)-1 that awarded death penalty to the Jamaat Nayeb-e-Aameer. Mancha activists instantly rejected the SC judgment and staged protests at Shahbagh Intersection that come under police action, leaving a dozen injured. Workers Party’s student wing Bangladesh Chhatra Maitri was an active participant in the Mancha movement formally launched from Shahbagh on February 5, 2013, demanding arrests, trial and deaths to all who committed crimes against humanity during Bangladesh’s independence struggles in 1971, according to a news agency.