Hangman's noose to Parliament: Two with anti-India terror links win Bangladesh polls
India Today
Three candidates who had been sentenced to death are among the winners of the Bangladesh national election held on February 12. Two of the three, both BNP members, faced the gallows for a plot to supply arms to anti-India insurgents and blasts in India. The third, a Jamaat-e-Islami candidate, faced war crime charges. They were all released by courts as an interim regime led by Muhammad Yunus governed Bangladesh.
The 2026 Bangladesh election has seen the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) trounce the Jamaat-e-Islami and secure a two-thirds majority. Among the winners are three individuals who faced the death penalty but will now enter Bangladesh's Parliament as MPs. All three had been freed by courts during the rule of the Muhammad Yunus-led interim set-up that was propped up after PM Sheikh Hasina was forced into exile. Two of the three faced anti-India terror cases.
While two of them, Lutfozzaman Babar and Abdus Salam Pintu, are from the BNP, ATM Azharul Islam is from the Jamaat. Prior to the July 2024 uprising that ousted Hasina, and her Awami League government, all three of them had been given the death sentence.
Lutfozzaman Babar once served as the State Minister of Home Affairs in PM Khaleda Zia's government from 2001 to 2006. That was the time when the BNP-Jamaat coalition was in power.
In the February 12 polls, Babar bagged the Netrokona-4 seat, bagging over 160,000 votes. A little more than a year ago, though, he was facing a very different future.
In 2014, Babar was handed the death sentence for his involvement in the 2004 Dhaka grenade attack which killed at least 23 people and injured at least 500. PM Hasina was the target of that attack. He was handed a second death sentence in 2018 for his involvement in the 2004 Chittagong arms smuggling case, which saw Bangladesh police and coast guard intercept 10 truckloads of arms destined for insurgents in India's Northeast.
After Hasina's ouster, however, the Bangladesh High Court acquitted Babar in the arms smuggling case on January 14, 2025, and he was released from Keraniganj Central Jail two days later.
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