Be alert against `unwanted` incidents: Bangladesh PM to forces

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina asked the country`s security forces to be alert against "unwanted" incidents like the 2009 rebellion.

Dhaka: Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Sunday asked the country`s security forces to be alert against "unwanted" incidents like the 2009 rebellion in the frontier force and promised a speedy and neutral trial of the suspects involved in it.

Speaking at the raising ceremony of the Border Guard Bangladesh`s four new regions and units, Hasina termed the 2009 rebellion as a "suicidal incident". She said it not only claimed the so many lives but also destroyed the image of the border guards and therefore "all forces have to be alert for averting such unwanted incidents in the future”. "The people of Bangladesh are tied to the bondage of relationship and friendship... We share happiness and pain to each other... So I urge all so that such suicidal event does not reoccur in future," she said. The four new regions and units of BGB have been created under a massive revamp campaign launched after the bloody 2009 rebellion. "We have already approved the new organogram of the BGB and taken steps to raise your manpower setting up four regions, four sectors, 11 battalions and an intelligence bureau," Hasina said at Border Guard Bangladesh`s Pilkhana headquarters in the capital. Over 10,000 new BGB members have been recruited after reform of the force and the process is still underway since the mutiny when 74 people, including 57 Army officers were killed at the Pilkhana in 2009 when the force was called Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), she said. The Premier also reminded the soldiers that the rebels were brought to justice in line with the law as "there is no scope for staging such activities in a disciplined force". "Their trial is going on in completely neutral manner under the country`s existing law... The trial would be finished speedily Insha Allah," the Premier said. She said 5,926 BDR mutineers of 57 units were handed down jail sentences of different terms after trial in paramilitary courts for command breaches under the BDR Act, that suggests the highest seven years of imprisonment. A total of 447 people have been named as "core suspects" in the case. The revamp campaign also saw the renaming of the force as BGB and changed law for the border force with provision for death penalty for mutiny while the process also introduced new uniform, flag and monogram for the border guards as part of desperate efforts to free them from the rebellion stigma. A government committee report said "a certain quarter" staged the mutiny using a sense of deprivation of the ordinary BDR soldiers but only a few BDR men knew about killing plot. PTI