SQ Chy held, remanded in custody
Staff Correspondent
Bangladesh Nationalist Party standing committee member Salauddin Quader Chowdhury was arrested early Thursday and remanded in police custody for five days in a case filed with the Ramna police over setting a car on fire on June 26 in which a man was killed.
Dhaka metropolitan magistrate M Nazrul Islam had allowed him to be remanded in custody after the Detective Branch had produced Salauddin, also a BNP lawmaker, in court seeking a remand for 10 days.
A car was set on fire at Moghbazar in the capital on the eve of the general strike the BNP called for June 27 in which the car passenger, Faruk Hossain, was critically wounded. He died at the burn unit at Dhaka Medical College Hospital on July 1.
In the prayer for his remand, the police said 35 criminal cases and general diaries against Salauddin were pending with courts across the country.
In the courtroom packed with lawyers, Salauddin’s counsel Khandker Mahbub Hossain, Pervez Ahmed, Bakul Hasan, Sanaullah
Miah and Masud Ahmed Talukder were obstructed in making submissions opposing the remand prayer and seeking his bail.
The defence counsel said that Salauddin was not named accused in the first information report of the case.
Salauddin was arrested without any warrant and he was sought to be remanded in custody only to torture and harass him out of political vengeance, they told the court.
Public prosecutor Abdullah Abu, however, said the detained former BNP minister Mirza Abbas, in his statement in the case, had said that every picket was provided with Tk 3,000 for the June 27 general strike and Salauddin was involved in the process.
Salauddin, as the court allowed him to speak amid protests from pro-government lawyers, told the court that he had been tortured inhumanly by the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence and other agency people at the Detective Branch headquarters.
Showing that he was bleeding in the nose, Salauddin said that he would not have faced such torture if Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had been alive. He said that the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, might not have been informed of the torture on him.
Salauddin looked run down and walked leaning on the shoulders of two policemen as he was being led to the courtroom on the third floor of the chief metropolitan magistrate’s court building.
Security was heightened on the court premises and no one but lawyers were allowed let in the courtroom during the hearing.
Salauddin was taken to the court at about 3:00pm amid protests from BNP activists against the arrest.
The ruling Awami League-backed Chhatra League activists later brought out a procession around the court premises. They also pelted the police van which carried Salauddin back to the Detective Branch headquarters, with shoes and stones.
Salauddin was arrested a day after the investigation agency of the International Crimes Tribunal, widely known as war crimes tribunal formed on March 25 to try war crimes, had filed a petition with the tribunal seeking warrant for the arrest of Salauddin on war crimes charges. The tribunal is scheduled to hear the petition on December 19.
The Detective Branch and the Rapid Action Battalion arrested him at the house of his daughter at Banani between 3:00am to 4:00am, the police said.
After the arrest, Salauddin was taken to the cantonment police station from where he was taken to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University as he fell ill.
He was taken to the Detective Branch headquarters on Minto Road after an hour.
Salauddin’s family and the BNP alleged that he had been tortured after the arrest.
