An additional chief metropolitan magistrate court in Dhaka on Sunday allowed the police to take three leaders of the Students Against Discrimination and a leader of the Bangladesh Ganatantrik Chhatra Sangsad to take in custody for seven days for interrogation in an extortion case filed with Gulshan police station in the capital.
The four include Students Against Discrimination鈥檚 Dhaka north city convener Md Ibrahim Hossain Munna, 24, and members Md Sadkaun Siam, 22, and Sadman Sadab, 21, and Ganatantrik Chhatra Sangsad leader Abdur Razzaque Bin Solaiman Riyad, 23.
Dhaka additional chief metropolitan magistrate Md Ziadur Rahman passed the order in the case filed by the victim, Siddique Abu Zafar, mentioning names of six people and 10 or 12 unnamed others as accused.
The student organisations, meanwhile, expelled the four from the organisations.
Besides Ibrahim, Sadkaun, Sadman, and Razzaque, the named accused in the case are Kazi Gaurab Apu, 23, and Md Aminul Islam, 16, according to the case statement.
The police said that they could not arrest Kazi Gaurab as he managed to flee from the spot.聽
The Ministry of Home Affairs, in a release on Sunday evening, said that the news of Razzaque鈥檚 being a student representative at the ministry was 鈥榗ompletely false鈥�.聽聽聽
Former Students Against Discrimination spokesperson Umama Fatema, in a Facebook post on Sunday, said that she had seen those boys giving 鈥榩rotocols鈥� to leaders from the secretariat to meetings, processions and clashes as the right hands and the left hands of the coordinators.
She said that there were allegations that the youths were involved in 鈥榞ang culture鈥� in the Gulshan-Banani areas.
鈥業f you dig properly, you will find that they were deep-rooted,鈥� she explained.
Gulshan police station officer-in-charge Md Hafizur Rahman said that they arrested five people from a Gulshan house at about 7:30pm on Saturday when the offenders went to the house to collect extortion money.
The offenders had earlier collected Tk 10 lakh in extortion from the victim.
The OC said that the house belonged to the former Awami League lawmaker Shammi Ahmed, also the Awami League鈥檚 international affairs secretary.
According to the case statements, Razzaque and Gaurab asked Siddique Abu Zafar to pay Tk 50 lakh in extortion and collected Tk 10 lakh earlier.
As the plaintiff refused to pay the rest of the amount, the extortionists threatened him, saying that they would hand him over to the police by tagging him as a collaborator of the fascists, the plaintiff said in the case statements.
The offenders went to the Gulshan house again at about 5:30pm on Saturday and demanded the remaining amount of Tk 40 lakh in extortion, it added.
The plaintiff was not at home when the offenders went there and the guard of the house informed him and the police about the incident.
A group of people and students on Saturday evening besieged Gulshan police station for half an hour, demanding exemplary punishment for the extortionists.