Just after a month of their arrest, BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and standing committee member Mirza Abbas were freed from jail on bail on Monday evening.They walked out of Dhaka Central Jail in Keraniganj around 6pm after the bail order reached the jail authorities, said media cell member Sayrul Kabir Khan.He said BNP leaders and activists and the relatives of the two-party top leaders received the duo at the jail gate.
Earlier on Sunday, the Appellate Division upheld the High Court order granting bail to Fakhrul and party standing committee member Abbas in a case filed over the clash between police and the party activists at Nayapaltan on December 7 last year. A four-member bench of the Appellate Division led by Chief Justice Hasan Foez Siddique passed the order disposing of the state’s petition challenging the High Court order.
On January 4, Chamber Judge of the Appellate Division Justice Jahangir Hossain fixed Sunday for the hearing of the petition at the full-bench of the Appellate Division.The petition was filed on the same day with the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court seeking stay on the High Court order granting bail to the two BNP leaders in the case. The High Court granted six months’ bail to Fakhrul and Abbas, in the case on January 3.
On December 9, a team of Detective Branch (DB) of police picked up Fakhrul and Abbas from their homes in separate raids in the capital, a day before the party’s much-talked about rally in the capital. Later, they were arrested in a case over the clash between police and the party activists in the capital’s Nayapaltan on December 7 centring the rally. A Dhaka court sent them to jail rejecting their bail pleas.
BNP, however, arranged the rally in absence of Fakhrul and Abbas and placed a 10-point demand, including the resignation of the current government and holding the next polls under a non-party polls-time government.
