“Keep it up for the good nation. We salute you Bashir. We are proud of you,” this was a comment on Assistant Superintendent of Narayanganj district police Mohammmad Bashir Uddin’s facebook wall appreciating him following the telephone conversation in which lawmaker Shamim Osman allegedly threatened the police official with action.
The comment on the facebook wall was written by Bashir’s teacher MMA Hashem, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Khulna University from where Bashir graduated.
Like MMA Hashem more than a hundred people congratulated and appreciated him for his brave act. His steps on the day of Narayanganj 5 by poll went viral on social network. A number of facebook pages posted his photo and made captions hailing him.
Many facebook users were also found anxious about the safety of him and his family. There were police and government officials, his friends, classmates and junior fellows of the university among his well-wishers.
Bashir had barred a local union parishad chairman from grabbing a poll centre and so he allegedly received threat from lawmaker Shamim Osman.
Shamim Osman, the brother of Selim Osman who won the election, threatened him with further consequences.
Bashir said holding the line, Shamim called someone over another phone, presumably the prime minister’s personnel secretary one (PS-1) Malek.
However, the top police officials of the district are keeping mum on such a big incident while the Election Commission said it would not intervene in the issue.
“I saw his statement on TV and I am not surprised. I know him since our university life,” said Mehedi Hasan Babu, ex-general secretary of Bangladesh Chhatra League, KUET unit. Bashir was the president on that committee which was formed in 2004.
Mehedi told the Dhaka Tribune over phone he knew him as a gentleman. “I must say he is honest, dynamic and was popular on the campus,” he claimed.
Some of his university mates also hold the same opinion about Bashir.
“He could not tolerate any unethical issues. He also retorted everybody that talked against his favourite political party. We saw some debate among Bashir and other officers who were BNP-minded,” a police official of BCS 30 batch said, recalling his memories during the training period at Bangladesh Police Academy in Sarda, Rajshahi. The police official preferred to be unnamed.
Bashir was recruited in the BCS 30 batch. After completing his training and probationary period in Manikganj he joined the Naraynganj district police on February 17, 2014.
“As far as I know, he worked at Tech Valley Networks Ltd before the police job and his recruitment was not political,” he said.
On the other hand, another police official of the same batch told the Dhaka Tribune he was known to Bashir when they were training.
“We went to his marriage ceremony probably in the third month of this year. There were some top-level Awami League leaders and lawmakers present on the occasion,” he said.
Born on May 30, 1983, Bashir passed the SSC in 1998 from Hazi Abdul Jalil High School Ashuganj and HSC from Notre Dame College in 2000.
After the incident on Thursday, Bashir told the Dhaka Tribune “I could not do what he asked me to do while I was in uniform. I cannot open a poll centre for vote rigging. I told Shamim bhai what he was planning to do would only tarnish the image of the party and the government as a whole.”
“I barred them from doing so on my own conscience,” he said.
His colleagues, batch mates and party men think he could stand up to the influential and controversial lawmaker's undue behaviour because he had a BCL background and was a man of good character.