The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, on Monday alerted her cabinet colleagues to possible extremist attacks on them and government establishments including courts anytime in August.
Presiding over the weekly cabinet meeting at the Cabinet Division, she asked all concerned to keep more vigil all the time against the backdrop of the recent grisly attacks on a Gulshan restaurant in Dhaka and a police checkpoint near the country’s biggest Eid congregation at Sholakia in Kishoreganj in early July.
Earlier in the past week, the Dhaka Metropolitan Police commissioner texted all ministers, saying that the police had intelligence report that extremist groups might attack any minister any time and therefore they should remain careful.
‘The prime minister said that she had information indicating extremists may carry out attacks on any cabinet member or any court in August,’ a senior minister told New Age.
He said several ministers expressed concern over the Appellate Division’s decision to defer to August 24 the hearing of condemned war crimes convict Mir Quasem Ali’s petition for a review of his death sentence.
They expressed fear that the convicted Jamaat leader would now give away more money and his followers might plan extremist attacks during the time to disturb the country’s stability, said the minister.
The attack on a Gulshan restaurant left 22 people including 17 foreigners and 2 police officers killed on July 1. Six suspects were killed in an army-led operation that brought the hostage incident to an end in the following morning.
Another extremist attack on a police checkpoint near the country’s biggest Eid congregation at Sholakia killed four people including two cops on July 7.
The prime minister in a videoconference with the people from all walks of life from different divisions on July 13 said the government had intelligence that extremists had planned to launch more attacks.
She mentioned that they were receiving information from different local and international agencies.
The government has already heightened security at all key-point installations including airports and power establishments as well as for foreigners working for various development projects besides others across the country.
In the previous cabinet meeting, Hasina also expressed fear that extremist groups might carry out more attacks.
She asked her cabinet colleagues to launch ‘intensive campaigns’ against extremism among people from every walk of life.
Monday’s cabinet meeting approved the draft of Bangladesh Shipping Corporation Bill 2016 seeking enactment of a law replacing the Bangladesh Shipping Corporation Order 1972, cabinet secretary Mohammad Shafiul Alam said.
He said the draft bill written in Bangla did not have any major changes from the 1972 order written in English.
Source: New Age
