Mirza Fakhrul shown arrested 9 hrs after being detained

BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has been shown arrested by police over nine hours after he was detained from his Gulshan house.

The leader was at the detective branch (DB) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) as of filing this report at 7:30 pm. DB detained him at around 9:30 am.

Asked about the decision of police about Mirza Fakhrul, DMP commissioner Habibur Rahman told Prothom Alo that the BNP leader has been shown arrested in the case filed with Paltan police station over death of a police member and torching vehicles.

Earlier after Fakhrul’s arrest, his wife Rahat Ara Begum told journalists that police members talked with Fakhrul and his family members. The law enforcers then took away footage of CCTV cameras and the hard disk. Policemen again came just 10 minutes later.

BNP held a grand rally in the capital’s Naya Paltan on Saturday, but party leaders and activists engaged in clashes with police in Kakrail ahead of the rally, and that spread out to Bijoynagr and Shantinagr areas. At one point, the rally was foiled around 3:00 pm.

The BNP-police clashes left one policeman and a Jubo Dal leader dead, as well as 41 members of police and 25 members of Ansar, 20 journalists injured. BNP claimed more than 1,000 party leaders and activists sustained injuries during the clashes.

Police said 55 vehicles including ambulances, fire service vehicles, buses and motorcycles were torched. The residence of the chief justice in Kakrail and the Central Police Hospital in Rajarbagh were also came under attack; seven police boxes were set on fire and a police vehicle was torched in the Kamalapur area.

BNP called the hartal ‘protesting the police attacks’ on its grand rally in the capital’s Naya Paltan on Saturday.