6 coordinators yet to be released

The writ petition filed seeking the release of “allegedly detained” six coordinators of Students Against  Discrimination (SAD), the platform that has been leading the student agitation, and a direction to stop opening fire on the agitators was not heard on Wednesday.

The hearing was not held as a double bench was not set up due to the illness of one of the justices.

Meanwhile, the families of the six coordinators are worried as they have not been released from the custody of the Detective Branch (DB) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP).

Three coordinators of the quota reform movement were picked up from the Gonoshasthaya Nagar Hospital in Dhaka on 26 July afternoon. They are Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker.

Nahid and Asif were undergoing medical treatment there while Baker was accompanying them.

On the next evening, the DB picked up two more coordinators - Sarjis Alam and Hasnat Abdullah. Then in the crack of dawn on Sunday, another coordinator  Nusrat Tabassum was detained from her relative’s residence in Mirpur in the city.

Since then, the six coordinators have been kept at the DB office at Minto Road in the city.

DB claimed that they picked up the coordinators and kept them at safe custody as they were feeling insecure.

Speaking to Prothom Alo Wednesday, Nahid’s mother Mamtaz Nahar said, “I’m worried. Though we were taken there to show our children are in good condition, we don’t know what happened afterwards. That is why the tension is going away until my son is released.”

Mamtaz Nahar further said her son was admitted to a hospital and he was undergoing medical treatment there. He was taken to the DB office from the hospital. There are injury marks on his body but he is not getting any treatment in DB custody. “I will go to the DB office Thursday and buy him the medicines the physicians prescribed.”

Asif Mahmud’s father Md. Billal Hossain could not meet his son, who is also a coordinator of the movement, Wednesday at the DB office.

He said, “My son was wearing a lungi when he was taken to the DB office. I went to the DB office with a t-shirt and pants for him but I was not allowed to meet him. Later, I left the clothes at the DB’s reception.”

Billal asked the DB officials when his son would be released. The DB officials told him that there is no chance of his son being released without any order from the court.

Following the students’ countrywide complete shutdown programme and subsequent clashes, Nahid Islam was picked up from his friend’s residence in the Nandipara area of Khilgaon on 19 July.

One day later, he was left in the Purbachal area of the city, with injuries in different parts of his body. He had since been receiving treatment at the Gonoshasthaya Nagar Hospital.

The two other coordinators – Asif and Abu Baker – were also abducted on the same day, and were released five days later. Asif had also been receiving treatment at the hospital since then, while Abu Baker was accompanying him there.

Two lawyers, Manjul Al-Matin and Ainunnahar Siddika, filed a writ on Monday seeking the releases of the six coordinators and the court’s directives on not firing live bullets on the protestors across the country.

The writ was heard at the double bench on Monday and Tuesday and it was on serial no. 10 on the cause list for Wednesday.

A court source said the hearing could not be held on Wednesday as one of the double bench justices, SM Masud Hossain Dolon, took two days’ leave for Wednesday and Thursday due to illness.