Following the debacle over its recently released list of wartime collaborators, the Liberation War affairs ministry says it has decided to remove names of people who did not actually opposed Bangladesh's independence in 1971.
Hours after Minister AKM Mozammel Haque apologised over the fiasco on Tuesday (Dec 17), the ministry said in a statement that it did not give any input into the list of 10,789 members of Razakar, Al-Badr, Al-Shams, Shanti Committee and other anti-liberation forces published on Dec 15.
The home ministry-prepared list was published without any change, it said.
"There have been complaints that a lot of the names in the list were not members of anti-Liberation elements like, Razakar, Al-Badr, Al-Shams, Shanti Committee but actually were pro-liberation or freedom fighters. We are looking into how those names got into the list," reads the statement.
The ministry said it will remove the names that have 'mistakenly' been included in the list upon reviewing applications from those who were aggrieved by it.
The list has been the subject of much conjecture as it included names of at least seven gazetted Freedom Fighters. One of them was tortured to death by the Pakistan army and four of them have passed away.
One of the seven is Ghulam Arieff Tipoo, the chief prosecutor of the International Crimes Tribunal, formed in 2010 to prosecute war criminals of 1971.
Apart from Tipoo, freedom fighters Abdus Salam and Mohsin Ali of Rajshahi, and Tapan Kumar Chakraborty, Mihir Lal Dutt, and Jitendra Lal Dutta of Barishal, and Majibul Haq (Naya Bhai) of Barguna were on Razakars list unveiled by the Liberation War affairs ministry on Sunday (Dec 15).
Razakars' list: ICT chief prosecutor 'disappointed'
