AL besieges Mirpur thana whole night for 'safety' of two party men
According to sources, Rapid Action Battalion (Rab)-4 arrested AL Mirpur upazila organising secretary Kamarul Arefin and Kushtia district Jubo League leader Zahid Hossain from Dhanmondi in Dhaka Wednesday night.
They were handed over to Rab-12 in Kushtia on Thursday.
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Being informed, a large number of AL leaders and activists went to the Rab office and asked the law enforcers to release them, claiming that they were innocent.
Rab handed them over to Mirpur police Thursday evening.
After their handover to Mirpur police, some unidentified callers informed relatives of Kamarul and Zahid that they might be killed in 'crossfire' at night. The caller said Kamarul and Zahid were held for their alleged links with an outlawed party.
As the news spread, activists of AL and its front organisations brought out processions in Kushtia town and in Mirpur upazila headquarters.
At Mirpur, the AL men kept the police station besieged from 8:30pm Thursday till about 10 am Friday, till the two were sent to court. They continued the siege programme apprehending that the two party men might be taken out of the police station to kill them in crossfire in the name of encounter, party men later said.
During the siege, AL leaders arranged cooking in front the police station to feed party activists at night.
The siege was withdrawn after police sent them to Kushtia court at about 10 am Friday. The court sent them to jail.
According to sources, Kamrul was a diehard AL worker in Mirpur. He was general secretary of Mirpur upazila Jubo League, youth front of AL, during 1996-1999. Kamrul left the area after police included his name in several murder cases allegedly at the instruction of an immediate past BNP lawmaker after BNP-Jamaat took power. He lived in Dhaka since 2002.
Police said Kamarul was accused in three murder cases. All the cases were filed when Kamarul was not in the upazila.
District AL demanded immediate release of the two party men.