Shafik Rehman
The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court on Wednesday granted bail to detained senior journalist Shafik Rehman for three months or until submission of charge sheet in a case of plotting to abduct and kill prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed Joy in the United States.
A five-judge bench headed by chief justice Surendra Kumar Sinha said that shafik Rehman, in his early 80s, was granted bail on humanitarian ground as he was sick.
The chief justice said they did not go into the merit of the case.
Pro-Bangladesh Nationalist Party intellectual Shafik Rehman, former editor of the Bangla daily Jai Jai Din, was remanded for days and then kept in prison after detectives arrested him at his Eskaton Garden residence in the city on April 16.
On August 3, 2015, Paltan police officer-in-charge filed the case stating that BNP’s cultural wing Jatiyatabadi Samajik Sangskritik Sangstha vice-president Mohammad Ullah Mamun, in connivance with high-ups of the BNP-led alliance at home and abroad, had plotted in September 2011 to kill Sajeeb Wazed Joy in the United States after abducting him.
Earlier, Mohammad Ullah’s son Rizvi Ahmed Caesar along with two US citizens including a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent was jailed in the United States for bribery to collect information about a Bangladeshi politician, said the case.
Joy was not named as victim in the first information report in Bangladesh.
Shafik Rehman, also a British citizen, was shown arrested in a criminal conspiracy case filed with Paltan police station on August 3, 2015 in connection with attempting to abduct and kill Joy.
Source: New Age
