This refers to the news report “Landowner sues Nazim Kamran Choudhury” (The Daily Star; November 15, 2007). According to the news, Mrs. Farhana Islam, a landowner, filed a criminal case with the Dhaka Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court against Nazim Kamran Choudhury (husband of the industries adviser Geeteara Choudhury) alleging that after the termination of rental contact Nazim illegally kept staying at her building in Gulshan-2 without paying any rent and other bills. According to Farhana in the court, Nazim Kamran Choudhury and his men beat up her and tugged at her sari when they made a bid to ‘usurp the property” on October 22. As Gulshan police refused to register the complain, Farhana had to move to the court. On the other hand, the Magistrate recorded statement but did not pass any order on the issue.

Nazim Kamran Choudhury is not an ordinary person – an ex-BNP lawmaker (MP), political theorist, businessman and above all a top NSF (National Student Federation) leader of the ’60s. If allegation against Nazim Kamran is correct it again proves that ‘old habits die-hard’.

Mrs. Farhana may not have heard of NSF if she was born after 1971. Just after taking over power illigally, Ayub Khan created NSF to propagate his (military) ideology. Under the full patronage of East Pakistan Governor Monem Khan (and his sons) and ‘Dacca’ University VC Dr. Osman Ghani, NSF introduced guns, violence-terrorism, election rigging, ‘cadre’/ ‘muscleman’, rape etc. in and out of campus. The names ‘Pach-pattur’, Khoka, Altaf etc. has became synonymous with Ayun-Monem era. However, not all NSF members are the same – military back current Caretaker Government’s Chief Adviser, Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed (a brother-in-law of Nazim Kamran Choudhury; who recently declared crusade against 3 Ms – Money, Muscle and Misuse of power) was a brilliant and well-reputed student. Another NSF member, Shaheed Bodi, Bir Bikram, fought valiantly in Pakistan military occupied ’71 Dhaka city.

As the people of Bangladesh too easily forget their past/ history, they repeatedly fall pray to the same old things – both at personal and national levels.

One hopes that the newly ‘independent’ court will soon resolve this matter neutrally.

Instead, I found wanna-be technocrats singing the song of elite revolution! Funny.

Getting back to the case – I figure there wont be much hue and cry about it anywhere (places that matter, not the blogosphere – though it may very well have an impact) since several people with key positions in the current ruling band will eventually be called into the light. Given the edgy situation created over countless “questionable” activities of the CTG, no one from within would invite any more troubles in the pot. Accordingly the Islams would be sidelined, threatened, and what not. For all we know, they would be made the “sacrificial goats” if the stuntbajes are that motivated, though I doubt that.

Replacing economist technocrats with people of science/eng backgrounds in the right places would be great.

I totally agree with Fugstar above. I think it has nothing to do with the fact that he himself is probably a science/engineering student. Absolutely not. Unlike the rest of us, his statements are motivated by lofty thoughts for improvement of the country. Not out of personal vanity.

Ashitechhe shuvo din
Dine dine bohu bariachhe dena
Shudite hoibe rheen!

In fact, thanks to media surveillance, these sort of land grabbing crimes by the powerful quarters have always faced government crackdown. Do you recall how Abul Hasnat Abdullah’s son’s faced the wrath of law enforcement agencies? Or how BNP ex-chief Whip Delwar Hossain’s son Paban was arrested for much much smaller land grabbing allegation? He was in jail awaiting trial for nearly six months. When Delwar Hossain was BNP standing committee member, his son’s bail plea was rejected at least six times. So don’t tell that this government is better than AL-BNP government. If this government was as good as the previous governments, they would not try to gag the previous press conference by the Islams and they would have arrested Nazim kamran, his son-in-law Adit Bhagat, brother in law Tareq and all others involved in this crime.

It was previously mentioned that the reason behind media balck-out of Dr. and Farhana Islam’s press conference was the fact that media knew Islams were fake and hence they did not bother attending the press conference. However today the report on this case have been published in all the newspapers. What does it mean? Did they finally understand that the Islams are indeed not fake, it may be the opposite.

“Then we will figure out how much we can export instead of calculating imports,” Karim said.

You’ve got to give this chap credit, he’s traveled within the country probably more than any of the ten and I think he’s the smartest. In any other circumstances such a talent would never be in the government. He is the silver lining.