Court dismisses case on BNP office raid

  

A plainclothes police man is breaking the lock of BNP central office at Nayapaltan in the capital during their raid on Monday. Star file photo.

A Dhaka court on Wednesday dismissed a case filed against 200 police personnel for ransacking and looting valuables from BNP headquarters at Nayapaltan two days ago.
Metropolitan Magistrate Harun-ur-Rashid summarily rejected the case around 12:45pm, three hours after it was filed, saying “there was no sanction from the government which is needed for filing a case against any government officials”.

Earlier around 10:00, Asadul Karim Shahin, assistant office secretary of BNP, filed the case with the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court in Dhaka.
The two top police officials whose names were mentioned in the complaint are Mehedi Hassan, additional deputy commissioner (ADC) of Motijheel Zone, and Sarwar Zahan, officer-in-charge of Paltan Police Station.
According to the case statement, Paltan police led by Motijheel Zone ADC raided the BNP office without any notice and broke open the doors of different rooms and looted valuables and official documents.
They also took away with cabinet and vandalised the windowpanes of the office, the case statement added.
On Monday, police arrested more than 200 opposition leaders, including BNP acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, during a two and a half hours’ raid at the office.
During the raid, police and members of intelligence agencies recovered 12 homemade bombs from the third and fourth floors of the BNP headquarters.
The raid was launched following blasting some homemade bombs during a rally of the BNP-led 18-party alliance in front of the office.
On Tuesday, BNP leaders Mirza Fakhrul, Sadeque Hossain Khoka and Altaf Hossain Chowdhury were freed, a day after their detention.
On the other hand, a total of 154 opposition leaders and activists including Opposition Chief Whip Zainul Abdin Farroque and BNP Joint Secretary General Rizvi Ahmed have been sent to jail over Monday’s violence.
Paltan police early Tuesday filed two separate cases against the arrested 154 BNP men and 50 unknown others.
Of the cases, one case was filed under the Speedy Trial Tribunal Act for creating anarchy and another for attacking law enforcers during the rally.