Perspective 1
According to one view, the new year's blasts in a Dhaka park and the killings of paramilitary along the Indo-Bangla border were part of a design to destabilise an allegedly pro-India government of Sheikh Hasina Wajed before the upcoming elections.
Ominous intelligence reports about developments that seem to be linked to the recent border conflicts between the paramilitary forces of Bangladesh and India do not augur well for politics in this part of the Subcontinent. Western and Indian intelligence claim to have unearthed a plot by former Bangla military officers—involved in the coup of 1975—to assassinate Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed. They maintain that these officers have the backing of powerful allies in Bangladesh's army and paramilitary and have slowly edged Sheikh Hasina towards a trap. The developments along the Indo-Bangla border, which culminated in the killing of more than a dozen Indian Border Security Force (BSF) soldiers, are seen to be part of this elaborate snare to bring an end to Hasina's political career.
On 7 March this year, retired colonel Khondakar Abdur Rashid, seven of his comrades-in-arms in the 1975 coup as well as a Pakistani intelligence officer, reportedly met at Breda, 60 miles from Amsterdam. The venue was a restaurant owned by A.K.Mohiuddin, an absconding accused in the Sheikh Mujibur Rahman assassination case. The would-be assassins have apparently been quite dogged in the pursuit of their objective, as the following list of their various efforts testifies. Two years ago, they tried to hijack a Bangladesh Biman aircraft from Kolkata. When that attempt was foiled, they tried to hire a LTTE suicide squad to assassinate Sheikh Hasina, Mujib's surviving daughter. Sources in Bangladesh National Security and Intelligence (NSI) reveal that the deal with the LTTE fell through when Rashid failed to transfer the promised 10 million USD to a LITE front in time. Thereafter, a bombing attempt against Sheikh Hasina at Kotalipara in her Gopalganj constituency was planned, but failed when police discovered 76 kg of explosives barely 300 yards from the podium where the prime minister was to address a rally.