A Dhaka court yesterday stayed an arrest warrant hours after issuing it against 17 leaders and activists of BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami in a case filed for creating violence in the city’s Paltan area on December 18 last year. Metropolitan Magistrate Mostafa Shahriar Khan passed the order in the afternoon after the defendants’ lawyer Sanaullah Miah submitted a petition. The petition said that the defendants had earlier got an ad interim bail for two months in the case but they failed to submit the bail on time due to unavoidable circumstances. Earlier that day, the same court issued arrest warrants against them and ordered the police to confiscate their movable properties. The 17 defendants include Jatiyatabadi Jubo Dal president Moazzem Hossain Alal, its general secretary Saiful Alam Nirob, Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal (JCD) president Sultan Salauddin Tuku, JCD general secretary Amirul Islam Khan Alim, Jatiyatabadi Swechchhasebak Dal president Habib-un-Nabi Khan Sohel and its general secretary Sarafat Ali Safu. A total of 58 people were accused in the case filed for damaging vehicles, halting traffic, causing anarchy and preventing police from discharging their duties. Muktar Hossain, sub-inspector of Paltan Police Station and investigation officer of the case, submitted the charge sheet against the 58. It mentioned the 17 including Alal, Tuku and Sohel as fugitives, although several of them got ad-interim bail from the High Court. The remaining 41 who were arrested earlier are now in jail custody. Earlier on December 18, several homemade bombs went off in the capital’s downtown as hundreds of BNP-Jamaat activists clashed with police and vandalised and torched around a dozen vehicles. A 24-year-old man, Arifuzzaman Arif, was killed when a bomb exploded in Motijheel area. Following the incidents, police filed 18 cases against 7,000 leaders and activists of the opposition parties for going on the rampage. Police also detained 289 BNP-Jamaat activists from the capital and interrogated 120 of them for six days in connection with the cases.
