Brigadier General (retired) M Sakhawat Hossain, former Home Affairs Adviser (currently Jute and Textile Adviser) of the Interim Government, said that 1,000 people have been killed in the recent agitation in Bangladesh over the demand for quota reform. He gave this information in an interview with the Indian media on Friday.

In an interview given to the media over the phone, former Home Affairs Advisor M Sakhawat Hossain said, “Most of these people who were killed by the lethal weapons of the police forces in Dhaka and other districts on the orders of the Sheikh Hasina government are young people and students.”

When asked about the number of the dead, Sakhawat Hossain Media said that the number of dead people who have been taken to the hospital or the post-mortem of the dead body has been published in the media. But many of the dead were not taken to hospital, or even autopsied—the number is too high. In all, the death toll will be around 1,000.

In an interview given to the media, M Sakhawat Hossain said, “Desperate to hold on to power, Sheikh Hasina did not care about people’s lives.” Apart from senior police officers, many members of Sheikh Hasina’s cabinet like Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal (former Home Minister), Anisul Haque (former Law Minister) and Obaidul Quader (former Road Transport and Bridges Minister and General Secretary of Awami League) were the masterminds of this massacre.

M Sakhawat Hossain said that after taking charge of the Home Affairs Advisor of the Interim Government, he spoke to numerous police officers and said, “I had to talk to the policemen for five hours to calm them down.” I wanted to know who they killed and who in the Sheikh Hasina government ordered them to do so. Hearing this, many policemen burst into tears. Some of them even hugged me as part of their remorse and guilt for these murders.’

Claiming that the government led by Nobel laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus has many miscreants and enemies hiding around it, M Sakhawat Hossain said, ‘My message to the Indian government is, do you want to see a friendly or hostile government in Dhaka?’ There should be no interference in the internal affairs of any neighboring country. We are not a piecemeal gang.’