Officers need to give up colonial mindset: HC

The jawans and the officers need to change their colonial mindsets, said Justice Md Shawkat Hossain, presiding judge of a three-judge special bench of the High Court Division, in the observations relating to the unanimous verdict in the death references and appeals of BDR men convicted for slaying their commanders during the February 2009 mutiny at Peelkhana.
He said it should be remembered that the jawans and the officers, ‘being our children and brethren, are the souls of the nation.’ 
‘Both are our men, our people, and not the aliens as the British treated natives during their colonial rule,’ he said.
He called for shedding the colonial mindset of the rulers and the ruled that persists in the country even today.
He in this regard recalled an episode of 1981, when he as a munsef, felt ashamed after seeing a fellow munsef ordering an orderly to remove his shoes.
Remnants of such master-slave relationships must, he said, go away from all spheres of national life in the interest of good governance.
Justice Shawkat Hossain said that the attitude of the officers towards the jawans should be humane and pro-administrative.
Evidences of the case show that denial of service benefits and some other grievances of the BDR jawans motivated them to go for the mutiny though such brutal massacres could in no way be justified, said the presiding judge in his observations.
He said that the jawans rallied the mutineers on the ‘slogan’ there would be no army officers in BDR.
Justice Md Nazrul Islam Talukder’s separate observations recommended formation of probe committee by the director general of Border Guards Bangladesh, BGB as the BDR was renamed after the mutiny to find out why the intelligence unit of BDR failed to gather advance information about the brewing mutiny. 
He said that it must also be found out ‘why BDR’s intelligence unit maintained its silence about the coming mutiny.’
He said that it was the responsibility of the BGB director general to address the grievances of all the subordinates.
He asked the home ministry and the BGB director general to take speedy decisions if subordinates place their grievances to them for solutions.
He said that the home ministry due to its ‘policy of procrastination’ took no decisions about the jawans’ outstanding grievances though the BDR authorities informed the ministry about them time and again.
He said operation ‘Dal Bhat’ implemented by , the BDR jawans widened the gap between the officers and the rankers over non-payment of dues to the jawans. 
He said that the officers should never assign degrading activities to the rankers.
He said that all these issues were used by the masterminds to involve aggrieved rankers with the mutiny. 

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net