The failure of the law of the land to protect citizens and prosecute the illegals rings out clear and loud. This was most evident when Anindita visited an IMDT court hearing in Guwahati. The name of the accused was the same, Shanti Debnath in the case under hearing. But the sexes changed in the course of filling the forms for the case. In one, Shanti was thirty-two years old and a woman. In the other, ‘she’ became a forty-year-old man.

The charge of illegality could not be upheld in this case because one prosecution witness declared his suspicion was based upon the fact that Shanti spoke ‘colloquial Bengali.’

Which court would accept such evidence? The case was dismissed.

It is for lack of preparation, lack of interest and lack of proper investigation that many cases under the IMDT have failed. Procedures are not followed and government lawyers seem totally disinterested in the proceedings.

The IMDT is as good as dead. All it needs is a decent burial.

Chapter Eleven

Kurigram and Keramat

We had risen early that morning, about 4 a.m., at Kurigram, the capital of the district of the same name in northern Bangladesh. It was October 1997.

There were about a dozen of us, mostly from Assam and other parts of India, to film in Bangladesh for a documentary film that Jahnu Barua, the film director, and I were making on the Brahmaputra river. We had completed filming in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. Our arrival in Bangladesh had been preceded by some of the most exasperating red-tape that I have experienced in many years of dealing with governments, especially bureaucrats. The discussions with the Bangladeshis went on for several months over the script, the itinerary and locations for filming. In fact, at one point, I was quite convinced that the permissions would not be forthcoming.

These finally came through, thanks to support from people within the system like the dapper and astute diplomat, Farooq Sobhan, then his country’s Foreign Secretary, and figures like Mahfuz Anam, the amiable and erudite editor of the Daily Star. Mahfuz is a popular, influential man who had been a debating star in Dhaka University before the West Pakistani military crackdown In 1970, in which hundreds of thousands of men, women and children were butchered. He also was a Mukti Bahini or a guerilla fighter during the war of Liberation, as were other men and women who have since become academics, senior government officials and political leaders in Bangladesh. His network was formidable, indeed.