Fakhrul, Khasru denied bail again

A Dhaka court yesterday rejected the bail petitions of BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Alamgir and the party’s Standing Committee Member Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury in a case filed with Paltan Police Station over assaulting policemen in the capital on October 28.

Metropolitan Magistrate Rajesh Chowdhury rejected the bail pleas and also turned down remand appeals for the two BNP leaders while allowing police to interrogate them at the jail gate for two days.

Fakhrul and Khasru were shown arrested in the case, as Paltan Police Station Sub-Inspector Sumit Kumar Saha, also investigation officer (IO) of the case, placed an application in this regard.

In the remand appeal, the IO said BNP leaders and activists, as per directions from Fakhrul and Khasru, attacked police officers on October 28.

“They need to be remanded to find vital clues about the incident and to know the whereabouts of the other fugitives responsible for committing such offences,” said the IO.

Opposing the remand appeal, defence lawyer Mohsin Miah told the court that Fakhrul is elderly and has been suffering from different ailments, including heart disease, while Amir Khasru has also been ill.

“Moreover, the charges brought against them are false and fabricated. They were implicated in the case just for political harassment,” the lawyer added.

After hearing both sides, the magistrate ordered police to send the two to jail.

Earlier in the day, Fakhrul and Khasru were brought to the court from jail and kept inside the lockup of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s (CMM) Court of Dhaka around 1:00pm, said SI Shahidul Islam, in-charge of the CMM court lockup.

Also yesterday, the High Court directed the CMM Court to accept, hear and dispose of the bail petitions of Fakhrul in nine cases.

The HC also issued a rule, asking the state to explain why the CMM Court’s refusal to accept and hear his bail petitions should not be declared illegal.

The HC bench of Justice Mustafa Zaman Islam and Justice Md Atabullah issued the order and rule following a writ petition challenging the legality of the CMM Court’s refusal to accept the bail petitions.

Fakhrul’s wife Rahat Ara Begum submitted the petition to the HC on December 14 through lawyers, saying that a Metropolitan Magistrate Court in Dhaka has violated the fundamental rights of her husband by refusing to accept his bail petitions for hearing on different dates.

Senior lawyer Zainul Abedin appeared for the writ petitioner while Deputy Attorney General Tushar Kanti Roy represented the state.

14 MORE BNP MEMBERS SENTENCED 

Another 14 leaders and activists of BNP and its front organisations were sentenced to different jail terms yesterday in two cases filed in 2018 over political violence in Dhaka.

With this, at least 1,027 BNP-Jamaat members have been jailed since November 7 this year in 59 cases filed between June 2011 and November 2018 for political violence.

In a case filed with Kalabagan Police Station in September 2018, 10 BNP activists were sentenced to four years’ imprisonment by a Dhaka court yesterday.

None of the convicts were present at the courtroom when Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Rajesh Chowdhury delivered the verdict.

Another Dhaka court sentenced four BNP members to two years’ jail for obstructing police from discharging duties in Kotwali area on September 6, 2018.

Of the four convicts, Shakhawat Hossain Anan, joint convener of Dhaka city Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal, was present when Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Mainul Islam delivered  the verdict.