Lutfuzzaman Babar should have been a cautionary tale. Instead, he is being written back into the story of state power. The former state minister for home affairs—once convicted on charges of arms smuggling, weapons possession, and corruption—has resurfaced at the Ministry of Home Affairs after walking free through a string of acquittals under the interim government.
This is not a simple matter of a man serving his time and returning to society. Babar was no petty offender. He was convicted in cases that cut to the marrow of Bangladesh’s security—the ten-truck arms haul meant for insurgents, the illegal cache found in his own home, the grenade attacks that scarred the nation’s politics. His own confessional statements linked him to the machinery of terror. At the time, those confessions were treated as undeniable proof of what many suspected: that terrorism in Bangladesh had patrons seated at the highest levels of government.
Now, almost two decades later, the courts have undone those verdicts one by one. With every acquittal, the memory of those crimes is treated as if it were just another legal technicality. And with his sudden re-entry into the Ministry of Home Affairs, the interim government has delivered the final insult: turning a man once condemned as a national disgrace into an interlocutor on policy.
The symbolism here matters. The Home Ministry is supposed to safeguard citizens from threats within and without. When a figure once tied to the largest arms smuggling operation in the country’s history can stroll back into that building as a guest, what does that say about the sanctity of justice? About the credibility of state institutions?
Some will argue that if the courts acquitted him, the matter is settled. But acquittal does not erase history. It does not erase the bodies torn apart by grenades. It does not erase the fact that a sitting minister once confessed to facilitating crimes that put national security at risk. Legal absolution and moral responsibility are not the same thing.
Babar’s visit is a reminder of how easily the lines between justice and politics blur in Bangladesh. It exposes the vulnerability of institutions that can be bent to accommodate the very people they should hold accountable. And it insults the memory of those who paid the price for the culture of impunity that flourished in the early 2000s.
The real danger is not just Babar’s rehabilitation. It is the message it sends: that if you are powerful enough, connected enough, patient enough, history can be rewritten and crimes can be washed away. For a nation still wrestling with cycles of violence and political vendetta, that message is poisonous.
