Senior BNP leader Rizvi accuses RAW for Ziaur Rahman death

A senior Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader has alleged that Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) was behind the assassination of party founder Ziaur Rahman.

"RAW opened a file to kill late president Ziaur Rahman," Dhaka Tribune quoted BNP Senior Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi as saying.

Rizvi also alleged that the then Congress government led by Indira Gandhi reopened the file and "Zia was killed within few days at the Chittagong Circuit House on May 30, 1981."

Indira Gandhi, who had lent her support towards Bangladesh during the 1971 Liberation War, was assassinated in 1984.

Rizvi's remarks came apparently in response to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's speech on March 11 when she alleged that the Awami League failed to win the 2001 election since the BNP had given India an undertaking to sell gas to them.

"The RAW agent here, he was always in Hawa Bhaban [BNP chairperson's former political office] back then, as were the US embassy people," Bangladesh Prime Minister Hasina said in a programme in Dhaka, adding, "So the anti-India rhetoric doesn't really suit them."

Rahman was assassinated on May 30, 1981 in the south-eastern port city of Chittagong.