Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury has instructed her security wing to ask the police to decide on the House committee’s letter requesting Sher-e-Bangla Nagar police station not to arrest or harass a parliament staff charged with assisting a fake army officer to intrude on the parliament premises.
According to the rules of procedure, the speaker is the authority to allow any staff of the parliament secretariat to be on parliament premises. But the House committee, headed by the chief whip, sent a letter to the police station in violation of law, asking not to arrest or harass Sujit Kumar Dey, an administrative officer at the hostel wing.
The House committee is tasked with ensuring food and accommodation for the parliamentarians.
Police say Sujit allegedly helped Mahmud Hasan, a fake army official, to get into the offices of the MPs in their absence. Mahmud, who impersonated a major, would sneak into the MPs’ offices, as a means of cheating people and collecting money by promising jobs and contracts.
On August 12, security officials at the parliament caught Mahmud and caretaker of the hostel wing Salahuddin Md Amin red-handed from the office of Kabirul Haque.
Sher-e-Bangla Nagar police said Salahuddin’s boss Sujit fled the scene when police arrived there.
Police said Sujit should be interrogated to determine his involved in the intrusion.
“The deputy sergeant-at-arms showed me the House committee’s letter which asked not to arrest Sujit. But I told him to let police decide the course of action according to the law. I have nothing to say about this,” Shirin told the Dhaka Tribune.
At a meeting on August 18, Chief Whip ASM Feroz termed Sujit innocent and said he was being dragged into the incident with a motive. His predecessor Abdus Shahid supported him, though the majority did not.
Sher-e-Bangla Nagar police sent the House committee’s letter back to the office of the serjeant-at-arms, seeking the speaker’s opinion on this.
The parliament’s security wing fears that Sher-e-Bangla Nagar police might place the House committee’s letter before court as a proof that the committee had intervened.
“That would be embarrassing for the legislature. It could also mean that there is a clash between the speaker and the chief whip,” a security officer at the parliament secretariat told the Dhaka Tribune.