Two survivors of the 2024 July uprising violence gave testimonies before the International Crimes Tribunal-1 on Monday, accusing deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina and her two co-accused of ordering indiscriminate shootings and denying medical care to the wounded.
The witnesses — a student and a day labourer — called for exemplary punishment to Hasina, former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan, and former inspector general of police Chowdhury Abdullah Al Mamun for their superior command responsibilities in the crimes against humanity during the uprising across the country.
The three-member tribunal, headed by Justice Md Golam Mortuza Mozumder and comprising Justice Md Shafiul Alam Mahmood and retired judge Md Mohitul Haque Anan Chowdhury, recorded the testimonies from the two witnesses and conducted cross-examinations during the second day of the trial in the case against Hasina and the two accused.
State-appointed lawyer Amir Hossain appeared for Hasina and Asaduzzaman who are fugitive and staying in India while former IGP Mamun was produced in tribunal from jail, where he is held in custody as the approver in the case.
The tribunal adjourned trial proceedings until Wednesday, when it will hear the fourth prosecution witness.
Abdullah Al Imran, a 25-year-old master’s student at Dhaka College, testified as the second prosecution witness in the case.
Appearing on a wheelchair with the left leg bandaged, Imran described how he was shot below the knee during a protest, near the Bijoynagar Water Tank at Paltan on July 19, 2024, as part of the student-led anti-quota movement.
He said that two fellow protesters were killed on the spot and many others were injured in the police firing.
Imran recounted being denied admission at several private hospitals before being taken to the Sir Salimullah Medical College Mitford Hospital.
Doctors there considered amputating his leg, but as his friends refused to give consent he was later transferred to the National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation, NITOR in short, where he received treatment for 11 months.
Imran testified that when Sheikh Hasina visited the NITOR, she instructed officials there not to provide treatment to or discharge any injured protesters.
She addressed him directly, asking him to call her ‘Apa’ (elder sister) instead of ‘Madam’ and questioned his involvement in the protests.
After her government fell on August 5, 2024, he was moved to a cabin and finally received proper treatment. Imran has undergone 25 surgeries since.
In the cross-examination, the defence counsel highlighted Imran’s political affiliations. His past Facebook posts show that he served as an assistant training affairs secretary of the Dhaka College unit of Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal, the student wing of the BNP.
The day’s third prosecution witness, 27-year-old Parvin, a mother of two and a day-labourer, offered a deeply emotional testimony.
She said that police shot her in the left eye on July 18, 2024, as she tried to carry a bleeding boy near the Jatrabari flyover during protests.
She came out of her then residence at Boubazar in Jatrabari on the day to join her work. On her way back in the afternoon to her home from Jurain on foot she came under attack at the Jatrabari flyover.Â
Parvin said that a boy, in white shirtseeves and pants and wearing a student identity card, was lying wounded on her path. As he was asking for help, she lifted him onto her shoulders.
As she pleaded with the police personnel there to stop shooting, she was fired in the eye and abdomen.
The boy died on the spot. She collapsed and was later taken to the Dhaka Medical College Hospital by bystanders.
She accused DMCH staff of negligence, claiming that she was denied proper care because her case involved police.
Three to four bullets were removed from her eye at the hospital while additional ones were later extracted at the National Institute of Ophthalmology.
Parvin continues to live with bullet fragments embedded into her abdomen.
Wearing a hijab and dark glasses in the tribunal, Parvin broke down in tears during her testimony.
‘My hijab was soaked in blood,’ she said. ‘Even today, I carry the pain. I came to the tribunal to seek justice and demand punishment for Hasina being an eight months old pregnant woman. I cannot tell lies.’
Parvin demanded punishment for Hasina, whom she described as the ‘mother and father of the police force,’ saying that such shootings could not happen without her direct command.
She complained that it was because of Hasina that she was now physically impaired with the responsibilities for two sons, one of them a madrassah student.Â
She accused Hasina of branding student protesters as ‘sons and grandsons of Razakars’ to justify the crackdown.
Prosecutors Gazi Anwar Hossain Tamim, Mizanul Islam, Md Abdus Sobhan Tarafder, and Shahidul Islam Sarder appeared for the state.
