Fakhrul, Abbas denied bail, sent to jail

BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and the party’s standing committee member Mirza Abbas have been sent to jail by a Dhaka court without granting them bail.

The Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) court in Dhaka passed the order at about 5:15pm on Friday (December 9).

Earlier, both Mirza Fakhrul and Mirza were produced before the court after 4:00pm. At that time, pro-BNP lawyers chanted anti-government slogans at the court premises.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP)’s detective branch (DB) inspector Md Tariqul Islam produced the top BNP leaders before the court of metropolitan magistrate Mohammad Jasim and pleaded to keep them detained until completion of the investigation into the case.

Then the bail of two leaders were sought. Though police didn’t seek the remand of two leaders, they pleaded to the court to send them to jail. Metropolitan magistrate Mohammad Jasim accepted the police plea and sent the BNP leaders to jail by cancelling their bail pleas.

Before it, DMP’s Detective Branch (DB) chief Harun-ar-Rashid showed them arrested in a case filed over Nayapaltan clash on Wednesday.

Harun-ar-Rashid said they were shown arrested in a filed at Paltan Police Station on December 8 last. They were shown arrested in a case filed for “instigating and planning attacks on police.”

The Wednesday clash between the police and BNP activists left an activist of the BNP shot dead and over 100 injured.

Metropolitan magistrate Mohammad Jasim accepted the police plea and sent the BNP leaders to jail by rejecting their bail pleas.

Earlier at around noon, the Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s additional commissioner for Detective Branch Harun-or-Rashid said that they arrested the BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and standing committee member Mirza Abbas in a case over Wednesday’s clash between police and leaders and activists of the BNP.

Harun said this about a couple of hours after saying that the two BNP leaders were taken to the DB office for interrogation on some issues and that the police would take further decision after the interrogation.

The BNP said that the two leaders were picked up from their houses in Dhaka at about 3:00am on Friday.

Mirza Fakhrul’s wife Rahat Ara Begum at about 6:00am told reporters that four police officials came to their house at night and took him away with them.

‘They told us two to three cases were filed against him between yesterday and day before yesterday,’ Rahat was found saying in a video posted on the Facebook page of BNP Media Cell.

The police did not misbehave with the family members, but they slapped some security guards who were late to open the door, she said.

The police arrested Fakhrul and Abbas only a day before the opposition party’s Dhaka mass rally, scheduled to be held on Saturday.

On Wednesday, an activist of the BNP was shot dead and over a hundred were injured as the police clashed with supporters of the BNP in front of its Naya Paltan central office and at nearby places.

Following the clash, police stormed into the party office and arrested dozens, including senior leaders in Dhaka.

On Thursday, the police filed four cases with the Paltan, Motijheel, Shahjahanpur and Ramna police stations against some 3,000 leaders and activists of BNP over Wednesday’s clash.

The police have so far arrested about 500 leaders and activists of BNP in the cases.

Lawyer Masud Talukder, who represented the accused BNP leaders and activists in a Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate court, said that a metropolitan magistrate court granted two-day remand each for 14 arrested leaders and activists in the case with the Paltan police station.

A total of 435 other arrested leaders and activists, including the BNP’s senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, Dhaka south city unit convener Abdus Salam and central leader Khairul Kabir Khokon and publicity secretary Shahid Uddin Chowdhury Annie, were sent to jail.

The police also took control of and barricaded the road from the Nightingale Crossing to the Fakirapool Crossing at Nayapaltan after the clash, halting the traffic movement, and locked up the BNP central office designating it as a ‘crime scene’s law enforcers claimed to have recovered crude bombs and other explosive there.