A short video clip is circulating on social media, which was recorded inside the special bus carrying Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, officials and BNP leaders during his official visit to Khulna on 5 November 2026.
A Joyful Tarique was standing beside the front gate, looking out the windscreen and waving his hand at the people waiting to see him on the roadside. Behind the prime minister were some senior leaders of the BNP’s Khulna unit.
They started talking as soon as the bus came near the “Sheikh Bari” residence on Sher-e-Bangla Road. The property belongs to former MP Sheikh Helal, a cousin of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Someone asked the premier to look to his left to see the house, now in ruins; Tarique looked outside while waving his hand with a smile. Everyone in the bus was boasting of their bravery to have demolished and torched the house on August 4, 2024, and laughing over the remaining bricks. Another person was heard saying that they had entirely demolished another house nearby on that day.
At one point, one voice was louder, who said with amusement that they liberated Khulna on August 4, a day before the fall of the Awami League government.
When the news of Sheikh Hasina’s departure on a military aircraft was confirmed in the afternoon on August 5, the anti-government protesters attacked the “Sheikh Bari” again.
In the capital, Sheikh Hasina’s official residence Ganabhaban, the parliament complex and the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum at Dhanmondi 32, as well as party offices, houses and business establishments of Awami League leaders and activists across the country, were looted and torched.
The “Sheikh Bari” was further demolished on February 5, 2025, when anarchists used bulldozers. The same happened at the Dhanmondi 32 museum. By 2026, the “Sheikh Bari” site was described in local reporting as largely ruined, with remaining walls, debris, and reports of scavenging of bricks and rods.
Awami League activists, and many journalists and researchers are talking about the Khulna bus tour video, terming it a “confession” by BNP figures accompanying Tarique Rahman.
Since the 2024 changeover, former chief adviser Dr. Muhammad Yunus, many student coordinators and leaders of the BNP, Jamaat-e-Islami and Hefazat-e-Islam have publicly described August 5 as the day of liberation, revolution and foundation of Bangladesh 2.0. Many have made public remarks admitting or boasting about arson on government properties, killing the police and burning or hanging the bodies, and property destruction during the anti-government movement since mid-July.
Video clips of their comments about vandalism and arson attacks on BTV, Setu Bhaban, expressway and metrorail stations; the planned murder of 15 police members at the Enayetpur police station in Sirajganj went viral on social media. But these statements were not taken into consideration in the trials of Awami League leadership; rather, the participants of the anti-government movement were given indemnity or legal protection to prevent prosecution.