By NNN-PTI,
Dhaka : Emergency-ruled Bangladesh has reinstated August 15 as the national mourning day to commemorate the 1975 assassination of the country’s founding father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
The Council of Advisers or the interim cabinet with Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed in the chair took the decision in a weekly meeting last night in compliance with a High Court (HC) ruling two weeks ago.
Former prime minister Khaleda Zia’s rightwing Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-party-led four-party coalition government had scrapped the status of the day on assuming office after the 2001 general elections.
On a writ petition filed by several lawyers, the High Court on July 27 declared the decision “illegal”, ordered that the day be observed as a national holiday and cancelled the then government’s decision prohibiting hoisting of the national flag at half-mast on the day.
Sheikh Mujib, fondly called as “Bangabandhu” or “friend of Bengal”, was killed along with most of his family members in a military coup on August 15, 1975.
Two of his daughters, former premier Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana survived the putsch as they were abroad.
The day was declared as the National Mourning Day when Hasina led his Awami League back to power after 21 years in political wilderness.
The delayed trial in the former premier’s assassination was initiated in 1996 to bring the killers, all former military officers, to justice and a Dhaka court in 1998 handed down death sentence to 15 of them.