New Delhi, Dec 17 (AHN) Even after 54 years of Bangladesh's birth, there are blatant attempts to contrive and concoct historical narratives to absolve certain quarters of their treason and blame India, observed an opinion piece in a Dhaka-based newspaper on Wednesday, December 17.

Calling it "mischievous manipulation of established historical facts", the Daily Star article quoted a recent statement from Jamaat-e-Islami Secretary General Mia Golam Porwar claiming it was India who had conspired to kill the country’s intellectuals on December 14, 1971.

Martyred Intellectuals Day is observed in Bangladesh to commemorate the killing of over 1,000 intellectuals by the then occupying Pakistani armed forces during the country’s Liberation War.

The day is marked with various commemorative events, including wreath-laying ceremonies at memorials, and is observed with profound respect and grief across the country.

But Porwar claimed that it was "part of a well-planned plot by the Indian army and Indian intelligence agencies".

According to the Daily Star article: “With their new-found currency in the post-2024 dispensation, some Jamaat-e-Islami leaders are seeking to reverse a well-established narrative and turn it on its head.”

It added that Porwar’s colleague in Chittagong having further distorted history by saying that “someone else used the name of the Pakistan army to carry out the killings”, naming India “among the suspects”.

The article dismissed such distortion, adding: “Such a narrative to exonerate the axis of forces, which unleashed nine months of untold brutality on our men, women and children, is preposterous.”

On Wednesday itself, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) summoned Bangladesh High Commissioner M. Riaz Hamidullah and expressed concerns over security threats to the Indian High Commission in Dhaka.

Earlier this week, leader of Bangladesh’s National Citizen Party (NCP) Hasnat Abdullah threatened to isolate India's Seven Sisters, the states on its Northeast, in a statement, offering refuge to insurgents, over purported "destabilisation" of Bangladesh.

Soon after the MEA voiced concerns on Wednesday, reports from Bangladesh said that a group of people was stopped by police while marching towards the Indian High Commission in Dhaka.

They intended to raise several demands, including the return of deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina and others who fled there during and after the July uprising last year.

Incidentally, former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been handed a death sentence over alleged atrocities during her rule.

Several other news reports and commentaries allege that the Muhammad Yunus-led interim administration in Bangladesh has shown signs of accommodation toward Islamist groups.

These include policy shifts, deregulatory moves, and a permissive environment for hardline actors. Among key indicators are lifting of bans on radical elements, public appointments, pardons, spikes in sectarian incidents, and changes in official rhetoric.