Actual casualty figure of Shapla Chattar incident much higher than reported: Shafiqul

Press Secretary Shafiqul Alam has shared a detailed personal account of the events surrounding the 5 May 2013 Shapla Chattar incident, alleging that the actual casualty figures were significantly higher than what authorities reported at the time.

In a Facebook post, Shafiqul — who was working with the Agence France-Presse (AFP) Dhaka bureau during the incident — described the night as one marked by confusion, clashes, and rapidly emerging reports of fatalities.

According to his account, the AFP office overlooked the Motijheel–Dilkusha area, where tens of thousands of Hefazat-e-Islam supporters had gathered throughout the evening of 5 May.

Shafiqul wrote that as midnight approached, AFP journalists observed bodies being brought to Shapla Chattar, though their origin and circumstances were initially unclear.

He said AFP received its first confirmed report at around 8pm, when the manager of Baraka General Hospital in Shahidbagh–Malibagh acknowledged receiving six bodies with gunshot wounds to the head — information AFP verified through multiple calls before publishing.

The following morning, the AFP team reportedly confirmed additional deaths at Islami Bank Hospital in Kakrail.

Shafiqul said the death toll continued to rise through independent verification, surpassing figures reported by local media outlets.

He also recounted receiving information about a separate incident near Kanchpur–Siddhirganj in Narayanganj, where a group of Hefazat supporters — displaced at dawn and walking home amid halted transport — were allegedly fired upon by Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) personnel, leaving around 20 dead.

Hospital staff in the district confirmed casualties, he said, though law enforcement officials declined to comment.

Shafiqul added that while senior government and police officials at the time denied that security forces had killed anyone, AFP’s independently confirmed tally reached 49 deaths — well above the official figure of seven.

He added that AFP disclosed the sources of each verified fatality in anticipation of pushback from authorities.

He referenced later estimates by rights bodies, noting that Odhikar placed the death toll at around 60, while Human Rights Watch reported similar findings.

Shafiqul further claimed that some of the violence in Dhaka’s Paltan and central areas involved armed activists from the ruling party’s affiliated youth and student wings — Jubo League and Chhatra League — citing personal familiarity with several individuals.

He mentioned the later killing of one activist, Riaz Milky, by another, Zahid Siddique Tareq, in an incident caught on CCTV.

Tareq himself was subsequently killed in what law enforcement described as a “crossfire,” Shafiqul noted.

In his post, the press secretary argued that such tactics — the use of party-linked groups to suppress political opposition — continued in Bangladesh for more than a decade, until the upheavals of July 2024.