Protesters besiege Police HQ for an hour demanding action against IGP Baharul over killing of BNP leader
Confirming the incident, Shahbagh Police Station Officer-in-Charge Md Moniruzzaman said, “When the procession reached the headquarters, the police blocked them with barricades.”
A group of protesters today (11 December) besieged the Police Headquarters in Dhaka, demanding the removal, arrest, and trial of Inspector General of Police (IGP) Baharul Alam over his alleged involvement in the killing of BNP leader Nasiruddin Ahmed Pintu.
The demonstrators, under the banner of "Shaheed Pintu Smriti Sangsad", marched from the Central Shaheed Minar around 3:30pm and reached the Police Headquarters, where police personnel set up barricades on both sides of the road.
Confirming the incident, Shahbagh Police Station Officer-in-Charge Md Moniruzzaman said, "When the procession reached the headquarters, the police blocked them with barricades."
Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel
After a 45-minute standoff, they left the area around 4:15pm.
The protest follows a similar demonstration held on 9 December, when the organisation blocked the Shahbagh intersection to press home the same demand.
The name of IGP Baharul Alam surfaced in the findings of the recently published final report by the National Independent Investigation Commission, which was formed to reinvestigate the 2009 massacre at the BDR (now BGB) headquarters in Pilkhana.
Since then, Pintu's family and the organisation have been demanding his immediate removal and trial.
On 7 December, speaking at a meeting, Pintu's wife Nasima Akhter Kalpana, also a BNP Central Executive Committee member, said that his husband was tortured and killed as part of a conspiracy to shift the blame for the Pilkhana massacre onto the BNP.
She added, "in 2009, following the Pilkhana killings, the then government conspiratorially detained Pintu from the High Court premises. The Detective Branch cordoned off the entire High Court area and arrested him.
|He was severely tortured during prolonged remand. Even his physical condition during court appearances revealed the brutality he endured. They attempted to force false confessions against party leaders, but Pintu never agreed to make any false statements."
According to media reports, Pintu, who was convicted and sentenced to life in jail for his role in the 2009 BDR mutiny, died of cardiac arrest in Rajshahi in 2015.
Doctors at the Rajshahi Medical College and Hospital (RMCH) declared Pintu, the joint organising secretary of the BNP's Dhaka Division unit, dead when he was rushed there from the Rajshahi Central Jail.
