Fakhrul sent to jail

0117

The acting Bangladesh Nationalist Party secretary general, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, landed in jail on Tuesday for the seventh time since May 2012.
The party urged the government to release Fakhrul considering his ‘health risk’ to ensure his right to life.
Dhaka metropolitan magistrate Maruf Hossain ordered him to jail rejecting his petition seeking bail in three cases of vandalism and arson filed with Paltan and Motijheel police stations on January 5 and 6.
The court, however, asked the jail authorities to provide the senior BNP leader with proper medical treatment in accordance with the Jail Code, as his defence counsel Khnadker Mahbub Hossain moved a petition stating that Fakhrul was seriously ill and needed proper treatment.
Mahbub argued that Fakhrul was sick, but appeared before the court seeking bail following an Appellate Division directive passed on Monday to do so as he was a law abiding citizen.
The court should grant him bail as Fakhrul needed to go to Singapore on November 24 for his treatment, he contended.
The court rejected the petition saying that he had no scope of granting bail for Fakhrul.
‘Fakhrul surrendered to the lower court showing respect to law following the Appellate Division directive… We hope that the government considering his health risk would allow him to exercise his rights to life,’ BNP spokesman Asaduzzaman Ripon said at a briefing at the party central office.
Ripon also hoped that court would see the matter with humanitarian ground.
He said that BNP became worried about Fakhrul’s ‘health risk’ as the court sent the ailing leader to jail.
Ripon said that Fakhrul was suffering from complicated diseases and physicians observed that his health risk would further increase in jail.
He said that earlier Fakhrul had become unconscious on a number of occasions in jail and he lost 16 kilograms weight.
Ripon said that Fakhrul was scheduled for November 24 to go to Singapore for further better treatment.
The Appellate Division on Monday asked Fakhrul to surrender to the lower court immediately in the three cases.
A four-member bench led by chief justice SK Sinha also asked a High Court bench to dispose of in two weeks its ruling that granted Fakhrul interim bail for six weeks asking the government to explain why he would not be granted regular bail in the even cases.
Fakhrul was released on bail on July 14 over six months after he was arrested at the National Press Club on January 6.
On July 26, he left for Singapore to undergo treatment.
On August 10, the BNP acting secretary-general left Singapore for the United States for better medical treatment and he returned later following the court’s directive.
After the arrest, Fakhrul was implicated in seven cases, and later was remanded in custody for interrogation for the first time since his six-time previous arrests from May 2012 to January 6, 2015, said party activists closed to him.
The BNP leader faces 79 cases and most of the cases are under investigation.
According to court sources, one of the three cases was filed by Paltan police station sub-inspector Mominul Islam on January 5 accusing Fakhrul and 28 others of vandalising and setting a bus on fire in front of Bangabandhu Hawkers Market at Gulistan in the capital.
The second case was filed against Fakhrul and 49 other leaders and activists of BNP on charges of setting fire to a police motorbike at Fakirapool on January 5.
Another case was filed against Mirza Fakhrul and 33 others accusing them of setting a Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation bus at Purana Paltan on January 6. Bus driver Milton Ali Biswas filled the case with Paltan police station.
Source: New Age