Looking back 2012

Looking back 2012

Nishat Mazumder climbed to the peak of the Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, as the first Bangladeshi woman. She ascended to the Everest’s 8,850-meter-high (29,035-foot-high) summit from the northern side of the mountain in Nepal on May 19 morning.

In the backdrop of stock plunge in 2011, small investors continued to hold agitations throughout 2012, alleging that an influential section had manipulated the stork market.

Hall Mark scam was the biggest disarray in Bangladesh’s banking history. The loan scam broke out in mid-May this year. Hall Mark group took Tk 3,547 crores from various branches of state-owned Sonali Bank with the help of the state-owned bank’s managing director and board of directors.

A tropical storm swept across the south- and south-eastern coastal districts of Bhola, Noakhali and Sandwip of Chittagong late October 11, leaving at least 21 people dead, hundreds of fishermen missing and innumerable dwellings destroyed.

At least 114 people were killed in landslide, lightning strike and drowning caused by incessant rainfalls at places in Chittagong, Cox’s Bazar, Bandarban.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, arrived in Dhaka on May 5 on a two-day official visit at the invitation of her Bangladesh counterpart Dipu Moni.

Maasranga Television news editor Golam Mustofa Sarowar and his wife ATN Bangla senior reporter Meherun Runi were killed in their Dhaka house on February 11.

Shariff Enamul Kabir on May 17 resigned as vice-chancellor of Jahangirnagar University amid protests by teachers and students. Anwar Hossain, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology of Dhaka University, was made vice-chancellor.

Saudi diplomat Khalaf Al Ali died at United Hospital in the capital after being shot at by assailants near his residence Gulshan in Dhaka March 6. Five people were awarded death penalty in the case on December 30.

Miscreants torched Buddhist monasteries, Hindu temples and households in 10 villages in Ramu of Cox’s Bazar on September 30, and authorities clamped a ban on gatherings for an indefinite period to restore order. In a fresh spate of sectarian violence, two more Buddhist monasteries were burnt down in Ukhiya of Cox’s Bazar on early October 1. Muslim mobs torched Dipankar Buddha Bihar at Marichya of Ukhiya and damaged Pangyamitra Buddha Bihar at Khairatipara.

The body of labour leader Aminul Islam, who went missing, was recovered with marks of torture. Islam’s death has inspired a fledgling global campaign, with protests lodged by international labor groups and by European and American diplomats, including secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton. This outside pressure is partly because so many global brands now use Bangladeshi factories. But Islam also worked for local labor groups affiliated with the AFL-CIO.

Prime minister Sheikh Hasina on September 13 expanded her government inducting five more ministers and two state ministers into her cabinet. Awami League presidium member Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir, Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal president Hasanul Haq Inu, whip Mujibul Haque and former diplomats AH Mahmud Ali and Mostafa Faruque Mohammed were sworn in as ministers at Bangabhaban. AL lawmakers for Rajshahi-1 Omar Faruk Chowdhury and Jhenaidah-1 Abdul Hayee took oath as state ministers.

Bangladesh national Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis was indicted by a court in New York on charges of using a weapon of mass destruction and trying to provide explosives and communications equipment to al Qaeda terrorists.

Information and communication technology minister Syed Abul Hossain finally tendered his resignation July 23 paving the way for the government to revive the financial arrangements with the World Bank for the Padma bridge project. His resignation was accepted on August 23. He was removed from the communications ministry and given the charge of ICT ministry on December 5, 2011.

The speaker accepted the resignation letter of ruling Awami League leader and former state minister Tanjim Ahmed Sohel Taj on July 7. Sohel Taj initially submitted the resignation letter as MP on April 23. Interference in his work was reported to be the cause of his resignation.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party organising secretary, M Ilias Ali, went missing from Dhaka around midnight on April 17. The BNP enforced a three-day general strike and organised a series of protest demanding his rescue. Ilias still remains missing.

At least 112 workers were killed in a fire that broke out on November 24 in the nine-storey building of Tazreen Fashions Limited at Ashulia in Savar.

A Dhaka court on May 16 sent to jail 33 senior leaders of the BNP-led opposition alliance, including the acting BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir in a case of setting fire to a bus.

At least 147 people were killed as motor launch Shariatpur 1 capsized on March 13 after it collided with a cargo vessel in the river Meghna at Gazaria in Munshiganj.

A tailor, Bishwajit Das, was killed by a group of Bangladesh Chhatra League activists near Bahadur Shah Park in Old Dhaka during the countrywide road blockade enforced by BNP-led 18-party opposition alliance.

Nearly five months into his taking over as railway minister, Suranjit Sengupta resigned on April 16 following the midnight recovery of Tk 70 lakh from the microbus of his assistant private secretary Omar Faruk Talukder.

At least 11 people were killed in a fire in a cluster of slums and bordering tin-shed houses at Baubazar of Hazaribagh in Dhaka. At least 25 were injured

The International Crimes Tribunal–1 chairman, Justice Md Nizamul Haq, resigned his position amid raging controversies over his conversations with a war crimes law expert over Skype. The ICT 2 on December 11 passed an order barring the media from publishing any write-up or transcript relating to alleged Skype conversation and e-mail communications between former ICT 1 chairman Justice Nizamul Huq and a Bangladeshi expatriate living in Brussels.