Sagar Biswas :
Secretary of the Religious Affairs Ministry Dr Chowdhury Babul Hasan has said that the Foreign Ministry will take decision whether bodies of Bangladeshi hajis, who were killed in Mina stampede during this year’s Hajj, would be brought back from Saudi Arabia. “If anybody dies during performing Hajj, the relevant country usually doesn’t bring back the body from Saudi Arabia…..It’s a tradition. Although Iran has taken back some of its nationals after the Mina tragedy, the decision of bringing back bodies of Bangladeshi hajis may be taken by Foreign Ministry,” Dr Chowdhury said on Sunday while talking to the newsmen at his Secretariat office.
The religious Secretary made the statement at a time when family members of missing Bangladeshi hajis have been demanding accurate information about the casualties in the tragic incident, which cost over 769 lives so far.
It is still not clear how many Bangladeshi hajis have been injured in the incident while about 934 were injured in the stampede. Even, the Bangladeshi hajis openly alleged that they did not get sufficient information from the Hajj Office.
Questions have also been raised about the performance of 350 officials and employees those are now staying in Saudi Arabia to look after the hajis.
In this backdrop, the Religious Secretary said: “We have identified 79 dead hajis till the date and the number of missing hajis is 70. However both the numbers [death and missing] may increase.”
Relevant sources said that there is almost no possibility of getting anyone alive sixteen days after the incident of stampede. In that case, the number of death [of Bangladeshi hajis] may stand at 149. Apart from it, several persons died naturally due to old age complications and other physical diseases.
“This year, the number of natural death of Bangladeshi hajis is about 129. Of them, 105 are male and 24 are female,” the Secretary said.
Officials said about 1, 06,000 pilgrims went to Saudi Arabia from Bangladesh this year to perform hajj. The Bangladesh government sent a team of 350 officials, including physicians and nurses, to look after the hajis. All the officials went there with government expenditures.
Now allegations have been raised that they did not perform their duties as desired level and for that reason the actual figure of dead and injured of Bangladeshi hajis could not be averting.
When asked about lack of efficiency of Religious Ministry for not getting exact picture of Bangladeshi dead hajis, the Religious Secretary categorically blamed the Saudi administration for the mismanagement.
“The Saudi Arabian government is mainly responsible for the mismanagement. They pulled out the dead and injured hajis using waste cleaning equipment after Mina tragedy,” he said.
The officials of Jeddah Consulate said family members of only two hajis have applied for the bodies. Preparations have been taken about burying other Bangladeshi hajis in Saudi Arabia.
