A tale of 'hajat'
Hussain Imam Chowdhury Mirpur, Dhaka
It still shivers me when I remember that terrible scene on a day in 1982--just soon after Ershad ousted the elected government of President Justice MA Sattar of the BNP on the pretex of corruption in the country. I was one of the victims of that tragedy. On the fateful day 25 May, 1982, I was, to my utter surprise, suddenly picked up from my office chamber at the BW Bhahan by a team of police led by an army officer on charge of criticising and accusing the Martial Law, under MLR 15, and they drove me straight to the zonal army control centre at Shurawardy Uddyan, but, thank God, I was not harassed. I had to spend a couple of days at the Gulshan PS and was locked in the hajat cum toilet of the PS where about 7 more people including some well-to-do ones were lodged. In the hajat, I noticed the toilet was overflowing with human excreta, that-flooded the entire floor of the hajat. But after about 20 minutes, it again went down through the same toilet, as the flow subsided. Thus it continued to flow up and down, time and again, throughout the day and night. The entire floor was soiled with suffocating smell and no space was left to stand anywhere on the floor. It was a most terrible scene. No one was there to do anything about it.
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