Gazipur Correspondent

BNP Acting Chairperson Tarique Rahman has been acquitted in another case filed under the Explosives Act in Gazipur’s Joydebpur.

Lawyer Shahiduzzaman said 60 BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami leaders and activists, including Gazipur Metropolitan Jubo Dal member secretary Mahmud Hasan Raju, have also been cleared in the case filed nearly 10 years ago.

Judge Rehana Akhter of the Gazipur Additional District and Sessions Judge Court-1 delivered the verdict acquitting Tarique and the BNP and Jamaat activists, he said on Thursday.

Citing the case documents, the lawyer said that then sub-inspector Syed Abul Hashem of Joydebpur Police Station filed the case on Feb 21, 2015, over allegations of throwing petrol bombs onto buses and sabotage.

The chargesheet in the case states that during the nationwide blockade, 50-60 leaders and activists of the BNP and Jamaat threw a petrol bomb at a passenger bus in front of the Kuliarchar Garments factory in the Signboard area of the Joydebpur Thana to cause unrest. The bus then caught fire.

Although Tarique was not initially named in the case statement, he was later named as a suspect in the chargesheet, lawyer Shahiduzzaman said.

He claimed that Tarique was implicated in the chargesheet for the purpose of political harassment at the advice of Awami League leaders and former minister AKM Mozammel Haque, former MP Zahid Ahsan Russel, and Gazipur Metropolitan Awami League President Azmat Ullah Khan.

He also said eight witnesses testified in the case. The judge announced the verdict on Thursday bringing the trial to an end after 10 years.

Tarique has recently been acquitted in three cases filed at different police stations in Gazipur.

On Sunday, Judge Md Bahiuddin Kazi of Special Tribunal-3 at the District and Sessions Judge’s Court-2 acquitted Tarique and 32 others in an Explosives Act case filed at the Joydebpur Police Station in Gazipur.

The case was filed in January 2015 over charges of pouring petrol on a parked bus and setting it on fire in Manipur’s Khaspara area of Manipur under the then Hotapara Police Outpost.

Before that, on Nov 20, Judge Pavel Sweet of the Gazipur Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Court-1 acquitted Tarique and 60 others in a defamation case.

In 2014, Touhidul Islam Dwip, then general secretary of the Gazipur Metropolitan Chhatra League, filed a case against Tarique, accusing him of making derogatory comments about Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.