Police take Jamaat-e-Islami ameer Maqbul Ahmad to a Dhaka court to present him to a magistrate there on Tuesday after his arrest. — New Age photo
Jamaat-e-Islami on Tuesday announced a three-day protest programme including countrywide dawn-to-dusk hartal for Thursday in protest at the arrest and subsequent remand of its central leaders, including the party chief, Maqbul Ahmad.
The programme was announced one and a half hours after a Dhaka court placed the party chief, secretary general Shafiquer Rahman and six other leaders on a 10-day remand in two cases filed with Kadamtali Police Station in the capital.
The party announced the programme demanding immediate release of its leaders.
Metropolitan magistrate Gulam Nabi allowed the remand in the afternoon after Kadamtali police station inspector (investigation) Saju Mia produced the eight Jamaat leaders before the court seeking a 20-day remand for each.
The other Jamaat leaders who were remanded are the party nayeb-e-ameer and former lawmaker Mia Golam Parwar, Chittagong city unit amir Mohammad Shajahan, general secretary Nazrul Islam and leaders Jafar Sadeque, Saiful Islam and Nazrul Islam-2.
One of the cases was lodged under special power act for hatching conspiracy against the government and the state and the other under explosive substances act.
The investigation officer of the case sought a 10-day remand in each of the cases.
Advocate Abdur Razzak who represented the Jamaat leaders prayed for their bail on ground of their health condition and submitted that the leaders were arrested to harass them politically.
He submitted that the Jamaat leaders were not named in the cases in which they were shown arrested.
The court rejected the bail prayer but ordered the jail authorities to provide them proper medication and allow them to meet their lawyers.
They court allowed a five-day remand for each of the Jamaat leaders in each of the cases and said that the remand tenure in one case would begin after completion of another.
A press release issued by Jamaat’s central publicity wing around 7:15pm announced the protest programmes.
As the Jamaat chief and secretary general were arrested, Jamaat nayebe amir Mujibur Rahman was appointed acting chief of the party and assistant secretary general ATM Masum as acting secretary general, said another press release of Jamaat.
The party alleged that the government did not allow Jamaat to hold any public gathering in the past seven years and snatched its basic legal and constitutional rights.
The release announced countrywide protests for Wednesday, dawn-to-dusk hartal for Thursday and prayer session for the detained leaders for Friday.
It said that ambulances, corpse carrying vehicles, hospitals, fire service cars, vehicles carrying newspapers and medicine shops would remain out of the purview of hartal.
On Monday night, detectives detained the Jamaat leaders from a house at Uttara in the capital.
Source: New Age
