The crimson monsoon
Early rainy season’s subtle steps was felt in the hot, humid afternoon in Dhaka on August 21, 2004. Bangladesh. The sun hung low on the horizon, shadows of people and everything around them stretched long across Dhaka’s bustling Bangabandhu Avenue. The city’s pulse beat fervently as thousands convened for the peace rally of Awami League— a party accustomed to the shadow of political strife since 1949-announced its stand against violence. Their rally was initially planned for Muktangon, the venue shifted to the broad crossroads near the Party headquarters after the permission for Muktangon was not available. The megacity’s atmosphere mirrored the rally’s intent—solemn yet resolute.
At the heart of the gathering, Sheikh Hasina, the leader of the Awami League, stood on a truck. Encircled by leaders spanning generations of the party, she addressed the crowd with a voice of steely determination, condemning terrorism and championing justice and democracy. Waves of supporters, brandishing banners and flags, cheered her on, their hope defying the precarious political climate.
At precisely 5:22 PM, the air buzzed with anticipation as Sheikh Hasina concluded her speech with the defiant cry, “Joy Bangla, Joy Bangabandhu.”
“I had barely completed my speech and was going to get down from the truck when I heard a big bang and the next moment blood splashed on my body.”
The ear-splitting explosion of a grenade detonated just yards from Hasina’s podium sent a cascade of shrapnel into the crowd and shattered the assembly’s energy.
Chaos erupted.
Screams of terror mingled with the acrid smell of gunpowder as panic swept through the sea of people, scattering them like leaves in a gale.
The human and the bulletproof barrier
In a swift and seamless motion, leaders around Sheikh Hasina formed a protective human shield with a singular, instinctive resolve, their outstretched arms defying the onslaught and helping her get into the car with security personnel. Time seemed to suspend; the explosion’s echo lingered in the air as shock immobilized many.
In the next 90 harrowing seconds, the relentless hail of grenades, reportedly13, unleashed a storm of destruction, Smoke and shrapnel enveloped the site. In a daring escape, encircling and guding he rto safety, Sheikh Hasina was rushed into her bulletproof SUV while her security team fired blanks to carve a path through the pandemonium.
Witness
The vehicle sped away as grenades shook the ground behind it. “I noticed a blood-stained Ivy Apa slumped in a heap on the road in front of me.” said Anisur Rahman, deputy Chief Photographer of the Daily Star. “Unthinking, like a robot, I raised my camera and took a snap of Ivy apa’s crumpled figure. My head was blank and I don’t know how I did that, probably that is how I am trained – to take photographs even when not thinking. Then I started to run, my feet slipping on thick blood flowing on the tarmac.” Said Anisur, as he also revisited, “near the AL office entrance where among others Senior member Suranjit Sengupta was standing with a stunned look” – his body soaked in blood streaming down his face.” (The Daily Star, 2018)
Sheikh Hasina’s trusted bodyguard, Lance Corporal Mahbubur Rashid who shielded Hasina with his own body and took the brunt of a grenade’s impact and Rafiqul Islam, lovingly known as “Ada Chacha,” were among the 24 who perished.
The inferno
Amid the wreckage lay broken bodies—some lifeless, others stunned or wailing in pain, in blood pooled in the street, mingling with torn banners and scattered shoes and bottles. The injured, stunned, paralysed, voiceless. Those who could move, knelt by the fallen comrades.
This was no mere attack on a political rally—it was an assault on the soul of Bangladesh’s democracy.
When the dust settled, a city mourned in haunted silence. The explosions claimed 24 lives, including Ivy Rahman, Awami League’s women’s secretary, who succumbed days later. Many hundreds were injured, many left maimed for life.
Makeshift rescue operations began—rickshaw vans and minibuses carried the wounded to hospitals. At 6:27 PM, yet another grenade exploded amid rescue operations, while stunned bystanders tried to process the horror that had unfolded.
Anger boiled over in the streets. Protesters torched vehicles, sending thick plumes of smoke spiralling into the evening sky. Police clashed with the enraged crowd, firing tear gas canisters in a desperate attempt to restore order.
In the days and years that followed, the attack was revealed to be far more sinister than initially guessed. Investigations uncovered links to Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami, an Al-Qaeda affiliated entity. Even more chilling was the revelation that elements within the government of the time—the BNP-Jamaat-e-Islami coalition—had facilitated the attack.
The August 21 grenade attack remains one of the darkest chapters in Bangladesh’s history, a chilling reminder of the lengths to which power-hungry factions will go to retain their grip on authority. For those who survived and the families of those who didn’t, the scars—both physical and emotional—remain a testament to the resilience of a people who refused to let terror extinguish their hopes for a better future.
The accusation
Later that evening, Sheikh Hasina addressed the nation with unwavering resolve. BNP-led government was accused of orchestrating the attack and wilfully ignoring the escalating wave of violence. “The activities of the police,” she asserted, “prove that the government masterminded the bomb attack to kill Awami League leaders and workers, including myself.”
Her charged words sparked a maelstrom of debate, yet an undeniable truth lingered—the assault was no random act of terror. It was a meticulously planned attempt to extinguish the voice of dissent.
A legacy of resilience
As the smoke cleared, the Awami League emerged battered but unbowed. The events of 21 August left scars that would never fade, but they also forged a deeper resolve. The sacrifices of that day became a rallying cry, a symbol of the indomitable spirit of those who refused to bow to terror.
And Sheikh Hasina, whose life hung by a thread that fateful evening, continued her journey—a testament to courage in the face of unspeakable adversity. The devils laughed that day, but their laughter was fleeting. The voice of the people, echoing across generations, proved louder and more enduring.
1 December 2024: A landmark verdict by the High Court
On December 1, 2024, the High Court acquitted all accused in the August 21 Grenade Attack case. To anyone watching closely, it was less a shock than a confirmation. Since August 5, the judiciary has been under siege by a Jamat-BNP alliance that has repeatedly released killers and violent offenders. Judicial independence—once a fragile promise—has been steadily eroding, corroded by intimidation, fear, and a climate where impunity is not the exception, but the expectation.
Imagine being a High Court judge, pelted with eggs in your own courtroom by BNP-affiliated lawyers, or witnessing the siege of the Chief Justice and Appellate Division judges by frenzied so-called student mobs, culminating in their forced resignations. Twelve High Court judges have been sidelined—not by law, but by terror, wielded by goons roaming under the banner of Students Against Discrimination (SAD) and tacitly endorsed through silence and hidden support of the Interim government. Lower court judges fare no better; under the jeers, insults and physical attack of BNP-affiliated prosecutors and activists, their voices are often drowned out before they can deliberate.
In such an environment, justice—for the victims of the August 21, 2004 state-sponsored terror attack—was never a realistic hope.
On 21st August of 2004, Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (1)—an Al-Qaeda-linked, Pakistan-backed terror group—was “commissioned” by the coalition government of BNP-Jamaat (2)-another radical Islami group with a legacy of genocide in 1971 Bangladesh. That day they organised the violence to annihilate Awami League leaders, leaving lasting scars on the nation’s political fabric.
The December 1, 2024 verdict has torn open wounds that had never healed, compounding a national anguish deepened since August 5, 2024.
By acquitting the guilty—just as it once freed extremists like ABT chief Jashimuddin Rahmani—the interim government has driven Bangladesh into an alarming decline, with Muhammad Yunus siding unethically with criminals while presiding over an unelected, constitutionally dubious rule.
Justice has been faltering, and democracy is being dismantled before our eyes.
In a nation weighed down by its troubled history, the ruling of 1st December, 2024 does more than deny justice—it foretells a grim future unless this downward spiral is confronted by the nation.
There are older wounds at work here, older patterns that repeat themselves until they no longer feel like patterns but inevitabilities.
For example, think about weaponization of justice. In Bangladesh, the courts have never been neutral ground. They have been weapons, aimed not at truth but at survival. The August 21 acquittals are not merely legal decisions; they are warnings, reminders that justice itself is a hostage now, bartered by those who hold power since 5 August, 2024.
Where did accountability go? You might ask.
For these particular groups, accountability has become little more than a rumor. Each unpunished killing, each erased crime tells the same message: nothing will happen to the perpetrators. The grenade attack was a wound in the nation’s body, and this verdict is the scar turned septic—festering, unhealed, daring others to strike again.
Terror of religious extremism that grew as clouds in Bangladesh was never local—it’s been crossing borders already.
The grenades that fell in Dhaka were not only local. They carried with them the fingerprints of transnational jihadists, the shadows of Al-Qaeda affiliates who thrive when the state looks away. What happens in Bangladesh does not stay in Bangladesh. The acquittals embolden the same actors who stitch terror across South Asia, a contagion of impunity leaking across borders.
Silencing dissent is now the regime’s loudest message to the people of Bangladesh.
And then there is the silence. Judges hemmed in by mobs, opposition leaders and activists vanished from the frame of the society (about half a million minimum), Journalists have been warned, sacked, beaten, and eight of them killed—to either follow the story or lose it altogether. Dissent is not debated; it is strangled. What looks like law is theater, and the script grows more authoritarian—with every act.
The August 21 acquittals reveal more than a failure of courts, politicians, or a single regime. They expose the hidden agenda of individuals who compromise national interest, teaching the victims of genocide to forget that they have been repeatedly attacked and wounded. Forgetting is easy; accountability is hard. But every time the people of this land forget—every time killers walk free, every time dissent is silenced—the foundation of freedom weakens. What looks like a crimson rebellion is only a rehearsal for full-blown violence.
The burden of ensuring neutral justice is not Bangladesh’s alone. When justice dies in Dhaka, it seeps outward—carried by extremists who exploit lawlessness, by autocrats who learn impunity is contagious, and by allies who remain silent because silence is cheapest.
If there is to be a future where violence does not write the script, it will not come from unelected caretakers or stage-managed courts. It will come only if the citizens and civil society of Bangladesh, backed by the world’s allies, refuse to let the “enforcement of forgetting” win—if they insist that justice be more than rumour, and democracy more than theatre.
And remember this: a land that has survived countless injustices does not forget easily. Those who try to bury the truth, who side with killers or the indifferent, will find that history has a way of returning—not softly, but with a reckoning that cannot be ignored.
The August 21 acquittals are not an aberration—they are the system revealed. Unless civil society, allies abroad, and ordinary citizens insist on something different—on a justice not dictated by violent power—the story will keep repeating itself: the grenade blast, the carriers of its deadly fragments, the trial, the acquittal, the silence. And in that silence, the future is already rotting.
References:
(1) https://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/states/jandk/terrorist_outfits/huji.htm
(2) https://www.genocidebangladesh.org/jamat-e-islami/
Jamaat-e-Islami is a Pan-Islamic organization with branches in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. Its ideology emphasizes establishing Islamic governance and it has historically mobilized members in countries where South Asian Muslim communities reside.
It is reported to have Ideological and sometimes operational ties with groups like Muslim Brotherhood, conneced to transnational jihadist networks including Al-Qaeda and ISIS have been reported in intelligence assessments. Some reports indicate links with Hamas through shared ideological frameworks and political support channels.
Jamaat’s operations often involve political mobilization, social services for conversion to islam and, at times, clandestine networks that have drawn international scrutiny due to alleged extremist affiliations.
Journalist and writer working in Bengali, English, and Swedish, telling stories of justice, politics, and human resilience.
My work continues under extremists’ threat, but silence has never been an option.
I write to document, to resist, and to keep memory of mankind alive.