Staff Reporter :A case has been filed against Bangladesh Nationalist Party [BNP] leaders and activists, including its Chairperson Khaleda Zia, in connection with the arson attack on a bus at Jatrabari in the city on Friday evening that injured 29 passengers.Police framed the case on early Saturday charging her of masterminding the Jatrabari arson attack, sources said.”She [Khaleda Zia] has been charged in a particular case of carrying out the arson attack on a bus with petrol bombs on Friday evening at Jatrabari area,” a police officer requesting not to be named said on Sunday evening.Without elaborating, the official further said that Khaleda Zia was named in the case as the ‘hukumer ashami’ or accused of ordering the attack. Apart from ‘main planner’ Khaleda Zia, about 18 top leaders BNP standing committee members MK Anwar and Rafique Islam Mia, joint secretaries general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, Amanullah Aman and Barkatullah Bulu, Chairperson’s adviser Shawkat Mahmud were named in the first information report [FIR] as her ‘planning associates’, sources said.When contacted, Officer-in-Charge of Jatrabari Police Station Abani Sankar Kar refrained from divulging any information about the case. “Please contact Public Relations section of Detective Branch to get the details,” the OC said.Meanwhile, quoting Sub Inspector KM Nuruzzaman of Jatrabari Police Station, the BBC Bengali Service in its report yesterday afternoon said that the case was filed by the police against Khaleda. In another report, PTI quoting a police official said that the case was filed early Saturday but the disclosure came late night because of the death of Khaleda Zia’s self-exiled youngest son Arafat Rahman Koko in Malaysia.However, no one was arrested in the connection with the case till the time of filing of this report at 7:00pm yesterday.Earlier, the police and RAB separately announced Tk 5 lakh and Tk one lakh bounties for information leading to the arrest of the miscreants who set fire on the moving bus hurling petrol bomb and crude bomb.
