DU employee gets bail in student harassment case after overnight siege on Shahbagh police station
They had been stationed in front of Shahbagh police station since 1am today
Mostofa Asif, an assistant bookbinder at the Dhaka University library, who was earlier arrested for harassing a DU student, has been granted bail.
An agitating crowd identifying themselves as Tawhidi Janata, who had taken position in front of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Court where Mostafa was presented today (6 March) morning, rejoiced following his release.
The crowd, comprised of mostly youths, started gathering in front of the police station at around 1am today (6 March) and stormed it half an hour later.
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Some of them started to broadcast the incident on Facebook from inside the duty officer's room.
One man, Altaf Hossain, who introduced himself as the joint convener of the 'Anti-Discrimination Prisoners Release Movement', went live on Facebook multiple times.
In one live video, he was seen interviewing the arrestee, a contractual binder at the University of Dhaka.
On-duty policemen were seen trying to bar them but the crowd ignored their orders.
At one point, Duty Office Sub-inspector Ekramul was seen telling the crowd that he had no legal authority to release or make the decision to arrest someone.
The duty officer several times requested the crowd not to create a "mob" situation, in response to which, the crowd retaliated and said, "We are not creating any mob. We just came to show our solidarity with one of our fellow brothers who was wrongfully arrested."
"I came here [at the police station] to express our freedom of speech," Altaf Hossain kept saying during one of his live sessions.
Ekramul Islam, duty officer of the police station told journalists that after 2:15am, the crowd got out of the police station and took position in front of it.
