Police in plain clothes picked up Bangladesh Nationalist Party secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and standing committee member Mirza Abbas at about 3:00am on Friday, party officials said.
Confirming the news, BNP Media Cell convener Zahir Uddin Shwapan said that the party was still determined to hold the Dhaka divisional rally as scheduled.
‘Our programme is on. The party standing committee will hold an emergency meeting at 11:00am to determine the next course of action,’ he said.
Mirza Fakhrul’s wife Rahat Ara Begum told reporters that four police officials came to their house at night and took him away with them.
‘They told us two to three cases were filed against him between yesterday and day before yesterday,’ Rahat was found saying in a video posted on the Facebook page of BNP Media Cell.
The police did not misbehave with the family members, but they slapped some security guards who were late to open the door, she said.
Harun-ur-Rashid, the chief of the Detective Branch of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, told reporters that Mirza Fakhrul and Mirza Abbas were taken to their office for interrogation in connection with Wednesday’s clash.
‘Mirza Fakhrul and Mirza Abbas both are now in our DB compound. We are interrogating them. After interrogation we can tell what decision will be taken about them,’ he said.
The detention of Fakhrul and Abbas came hours after the police and the BNP appeared to have reached a consensus on holding the party’s divisional mass rally in Dhaka city on December 10.
The rally was expected to be held at the Kamlapur Stadium or the Mirpur Bangla College ground, BNP leaders said after a meeting between a BNP delegation and Dhaka Metropolitan Police commissioner Khandker Golam Faruq at the latter’s office in Dhaka on Thursday night.
Emerging from the meeting that lasted about two and a half hours, BNP delegation chief Barkat Ullah Bulu told reporters that the police offered them to hold their rally at the Mirpur Bangla College ground while the BNP requested the Kamlapur Stadium.
