A Dhaka court yesterday placed Shawkat Mahmud, an adviser to the BNP chairperson and also a journalist leader, on a three-day remand in an arson case filed with Ramna police station in the capital.
Metropolitan Magistrate Shahriar Mahmud Adnan passed the order after Detective Branch Sub-Inspector Md Shafiqul Islam, also the investigation officer of the case, produced him before the court with a 10-day remand petition
Showing Shawkat Mahmud arrested in the arson case, the IO mentioned in his remand plea that Shawkat, the president of Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalists (BFUJ), had instigated the arson attack and needed to be questioned to locate the other fugitives.
Opposing the remand plea, defence counsel Md Masud Ahmed Talukdar filed a petition seeking Shawkat’s bail and cancellation of the remand prayer, saying that his name was not mentioned in the FIR and he was implicated in the case as part of a conspiracy to harass him politically.
After hearing both the defence and prosecution, the magistrate rejected the bail petition and granted a three-day remand.
According to the case documents, a group of BNP led-20-party men on January 9, hurled a petrol bomb on a private car in the capital’s Moghbazar, leaving its driver injured with burns. Later, the driver, Abul Kalam Azad, succumbed to his injures on January 15.
In this connection, Sub-inspector Md Atiqur Rahman Biswas filed a case accusing 13 leaders and activists of BNP lead alliance with Ramna police station.
On Tuesday, detectives arrested Shawkat Mahmud from in front of Samarai Convention Centre in the capital’s Panthapath. The police said he was arrested in connection with three cases filed with Jatrabari and Ramna police stations on charges of arson attacks on vehicles, vandalising vehicles and crude bomb blasts.
