Guests including State Minister for Home Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal sitting on the stage thrown up on the Shaheed Minar at Sarail.
State Minister for Home Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal has said that he had no idea that he was stepping on a Shaheed Minar’s altar with his shoes on.
He told bdnews24.com on Tuesday night that it happened because the Shaheed Minar was completely covered by the dais.
Kamal also held the organisers responsible for the unintended violation.
The minister along with several other government officials had earlier in the day attended a function held at the Pilot Girls High School at Sarail Sadar Upazila in Brahmanbaria.
The main stage of the programme was set up on the main altar of the school’s Shaheed Minar.
Offending popular sensibilities, all the guests, including the minister, had walked up to the stage in the event presided over by Priti Chakraborty, Chairman of Dhaka’s Aysha Memorial Specialised Hospital.
Asked about the incident, Asazuzzaman Khan Kamal told bdnews24.com: “I didn’t know it was a Shaheed Minar. I was not told by the organisers either. Had I known, I would have taken my shoes off.”
He said he had no wish to disrespect the martyrs of the 1952 Language Movement.
However, one of the event organisers, the hospital’s Brahmanbaria liaison officer Sanjeeb Bhattacharya, admitted the misstep.
“It was a mistake. We can’t do anything about it now,” he said.
bdnews24.com tried to reach Priti Chakraborty over phone for comments, but she was unavailable.
DC Mosharraf Hossain told reporters, “We didn’t know it was a Shaheed Minar.”
Many in the audience, including the school’s students, were initially surprised seeing a stage erected on the Shaheed Minar.
Then they were doubly shocked when the guests walked on it without caring to take their shoes off.
A ninth-grader told bdnews24.com, “We have known that Shaheed Minar is venerated place where shoes are not allowed. But today we saw the guests standing on it with their shoes on.”
The school’s headmaster Md Aiyub Khan, too, declined comment, saying he was busy when reached by phone.
Junior home minister Kamal was the chief guest at the programme.
Local MP Ziaul Haque Mridha, Deputy Commissioner of Brahmanbaria Mosharraf Hossain, Superintendent of Police Md Moniruzzaman, acting Upazila Nirbahi Officer Swandip Kumar Singha Roy and former Chairman of the Upazila Rafique Uddin Thakur were among other the attendees.
Source: Bd news24