The chief whip admitted to the Dhaka Tribune about making the comments at the meeting
Chief Whip ASM Feroz has failed in his alleged efforts to unlawfully influence the parliament’s House Committee to adopt a resolution against the arrest of an officer suspected of criminal wrongdoing, following counter-arguments from another MP who said the parliamentary body should not poke its nose into a police investigation.
The police suspect that Ajit Kumar Dey, an administrative officer-in-charge of the parliament’s hostel wing, was an accomplice of a fake army major who was arrested for trespassing in an MP’s office with the help of Salahuddin Md Amin, the caretaker of the hostel wing who maintains keys of all rooms of the MP hostel.
Upon clearance from Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury, the police arrested Salahuddin; but Ajit has been lobbying with the MPs, showing grounds that the police cannot arrest anyone in the parliament premises without the permission of the speaker.
“I think Ajit is not involved in it [the crime]. He should not be arrested. We can consider whether the House
Committee can take a resolution on this,” Feroz told a meeting of the committee which Ajit also attended.
The chief whip admitted to the Dhaka Tribune about making the comments at the meeting.
Discussing security arrangements at the parliament secretariat, the chief whip raised the issue of the fake major’s arrest and said the security wing often harassed the MPs in the name of checking, but many intruders went unchecked.
“Why should Ajit be involved in it?” he asked the Sergeant-at-Arms Ashraful Haq; who replied by saying: “Why has Ajit been hiding? Ajit is the officer of the department that kept all keys of all rooms.”
Quoting police officials, Ashraful said the arrested persons had been maintaining offices at the MP hostel for more than a year, while Salahuddin and the fake major said they had connections with Ajit.
Police officials were also present at the House Committee meeting.
Noor-E-Alam Chowdhury, a committee member and the prime minister’s nephew, then took the floor.
“Why should we discuss the arrest of an officer at the House Committee; this is not the forum to discuss the issue. If he was an MP, it could have been a matter for us,” Noor-E-Alam told the Dhaka Tribune after the meeting.
He said the speaker and the parliament secretariat were there to deal with this issue.
“The House Committee should stick its own duties. We must not take any resolution on whether the police should arrest him [Ajit] or not. If we adopt a resolution, it will create pressure on the police; they should act in accordance with the law,” he said. Immediate-past chief whip Abdus Shahid also supported Noor-E-Alam, asking the committee to refrain from adopting the resolution as proposed by the chief whip.
The committee then recommended that the MPs will have to maintain the keys to their offices and none would be allowed in the hostel after 10pm.
On August 12, security officials arrested Mahmud Hasan, a professional fraud who allegedly cheats people by promising jobs and contracts, and hostel caretaker Salahuddin, who allegedly used to enter the MP’s offices while they were outside Dhaka, just to show people that he had many offices at the Jatiya Sangsad premises.
Ashraful Moqbul, the parliament secretary, told the Dhaka Tribune: “The honourable speaker has already instructed us that anyone proved to be involved with the crime should face punishment in accordance with law.
“We will handover [Ajit] to the police for the sake of investigation, if necessary,” he added.
The association of the parliament officials yesterday also saw Pranab Chakravarty, an additional secretary of the parliament secretariat, demanding that Ajit should not be arrested.
Source: Dhaka Tribune
