The police arrested former senior secretary Abu Alam Md Shahid Khan at his home in the capital鈥檚 Eskaton area on Monday.
A team of the Detective Branch arrested him at about 2:30am in a case filed with Shahbagh police station under the Anti-Terrorism Act, said Dhaka Metropolitan Police鈥檚 deputy commissioner for media and public relations, Mohammad Talebur Rahman.
Shahbagh police station sub-inspector Md Toufiq Hasan, who is the investigation officer of the case, produced him before the court of Dhaka metropolitan magistrate Md Saifuzzaman, who sent him to jail.
The case was filed over an August 28 discussion by a platform created by 1971 freedom fighters, Mancha 71, at the Dhaka Reporters Unity, which also led to the arrest of 16 people, including former minister and freedom fighter Latif Siddique and journalist Monjurul Alam Panna.
A group of people claiming to be 鈥楯uly Jodda鈥� stormed into the venue, surrounded and besieged the participants, accusing them of being loyal to the ousted Awami League, allegedly assaulted some of the participants, and handed 16 of the participants over to the police.
Sub-inspector Amirul Islam filed a case against the 16 people and some unidentified others on August 29, alleging them of conspiracy to destabilise the country to oust the interim government.
Later, they were shown arrested in the case.
SI Toufiq Hasan said that it was found during the investigation that Abu Alam, who retired as a senior secretary of the local government division in 2015, was involved in organising the event allegedly to destablise the country and conspiring to oust the interim government.
鈥榃e are not yet sure whether he was present in the August 28 event but he was involved in organising the event,鈥� he said.
Abu Alam, then a senior assistant secretary, was one of the organisers of the 鈥楯anatar Mancha鈥� movement against the Bangladesh Nationalist Party government in 1996.
He later served as a deputy press secretary to the then prime minister Sheikh Hasina during her term between 1996 and 2001.
When the BNP-led alliance returned to power in 2001, Abu Alam was made an officer on special duty and was denied promotions in the civil bureaucracy.
After the Awami League came back to office in 2009, he was first promoted to deputy secretary and quickly became a secretary in the following year.
Awami League was ousted from power on August 5, 2024 amid a mass uprising and the party鈥檚 activities are now banned.
