Just a month before the crucial Union Parishad (UP) elections on March 22, police yesterday submitted two separate charge-sheets against 49 Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) workers, including two of its top leaders Rafiqul Islam Miah and Amanullah Aman, in an
arson case.
Mizanur Rahman, sub-inspector of Paltan police station and also the investigation officer, submitted the charge-sheets under penal code and under explosives substance act at the Dhaka Chief Metropolitan
Magistrate court.
The charge-sheets will be moved to the court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate on March 6.
On January 6, 2015, unidentified persons set fire to a bus on Motijheel-Banani route near Bangabandhu Avenue. They also exploded three crude bombs during the
incident.
Senior BNP leaders and many activists are facing cases tied to more than 90-day transportation blockade programme across the country that began in January last year demanding ouster of the government and a new
election.
Earlier, police pressed charges against BNP acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and 52 others in two cases filed in connection with vandalising and torching vehicles.
At least 95 people were killed and hundreds were injured, in arson attacks on public transports in the first three months of 2015 when BNP-led 20-party alliances enforced an indefinite blockade.
Around 400 cases had been filed against 20-party alliance activists for last year’s violence in Dhaka, Joynal Abedin Mesbah, a lawyer for BNP activists, told newsmen in Dhaka yesterday.
He said seven cases were filed in Dhaka against Fakhrul in this connection.
In the first of the two cases in which charges were pressed, sub-inspector Abdul Jalil pressed charges against Fakhrul and 39 other BNP men for damaging and torching a vehicle on January 4
last year.
Of the accused, Fakhrul and 19 others are now on bail while other BNP leaders, including Rafiqul Islam Mia, Shamsur Rahman Shimul Biswas, Barkatullah Bulu and 17 others, were shown as absconding.
In the second of the cases, Sub-Inspector Vivekananda Debnath pressed charges against Fakhrul and 52 others for setting fire to a motorbike of a policeman on January 5 last year.
Forty people were accused in both the cases. The charge-sheets would be placed before the court on March 2 for the next course of action, court sources said.
Joynal Abedin Mesbah said all these charge-sheets are being filed to bar BNP leaders from campaigning for the party candidates in the upcoming Parishad elections. Elections to 752 Parishads would be held in the first phase on March 22, while over 3,500 more Parishads will go to polls in phases until June 4, according to the polls schedule announced by the election
commission.
The BNP has decided to participate in the polls.