DHAKA, 18 February 2005 — Foreign Minister M. Morshed Khan yesterday urged the Pakistan government to take necessary effective measures to take back the stranded Pakistanis from Bangladesh. The number of stranded Pakistanis in Bangladesh stands at 237,440, according to a survey conducted by Rabita Al-Alam Al-Islami, he said while replying to G.M. Kader (Jatiya Party) during the question hour in Parliament.
The minister also informed the house that the government is trying to solve the stranded Pakistanis’ problem.He said that in 1993, the Nawaz Sharif government of Pakistan took back a batch of stranded Pakistanis consisting of 50 families.
But later the Pakistan government did not allow any stranded Pakistanis from Bangladesh to go there, Morshed Khan said.
After the present government took office in 2001, the bilateral negotiation for taking the Pakistanis in Bangladesh started again. “I tabled the matter in front of the president and the foreign minister of Pakistan in June 2002,” he said.
During the visit of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in July 2002, Prime Minsiter Khaleda Zia also requested Musharraf to resolve the matter. “In reply, the Pakistani president also expressed his positive attitude,” Morshed Khan added. In July 2003 and May 2004, Bangladesh also raised the matter in the meeting of foreign secretaries that was held in Dhaka.
Top Police Official Arrested for Bomb Attack in Port City
The additional superintendent of police of southwestern port city of Khulna, closed on Tuesday for harboring an outlawed Maoist guerrilla, was arrested in Dhaka city late Wednesday night and sent by a court to Dhaka central jail yesterday.
The additional SP, Mofazzel Hossain, was brought to police headquarters in the capital and detained, police sources said. He was being quizzed there for his involvement in abetting the bomb attack on journalists, the sources added.
Mofazzel would be sent back to Khulna police station for on the spot interrogation in connection with two cases filed against him, a senior official of the Mohammadpur police station said.
Sources said Mofazzel, who assaulted cops of elite Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) at his office in the port city Monday night, may be implicated in the bomb attack that killed journalist Sheikh Belaluddin and injured three others on Khulna Press Club premises last week.
Mofazzel would be implicated in the case following a statement of Swadhin, an outlaw held in suspicion of planting the bombs on Belaluddin’s motorbike, the sources added.
Mofazzel assaulted a group of RAB men when they went to his office at around 10 p.m. on Monday to arrest Hasan, a cadre of Purba Banglar Communist Party’s Janajuddho faction, the superintendent of police at Khulna said earlier.
Six Injured in Bomb Attacks
At least six employees of two leading non-government rural development organizations, BRAC and Grameen Bank, were injured in bomb attacks at their respective offices in Naogaon district and in Sirajganj district, a report reaching Dhaka yesterday said..
In Naogaon, unidentified assailants hurled bombs at an office of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee BRAC in Porsha sub-district of the district leaving four of its employees, including the manager, injured.
The injured, manager Abdur Rashid, 32, program organiser Kobaduzzaman, 36, Rezaul Islam, 34, and Enamul Haq, 30, are now undergoing treatment at the Naogaon Sadar Hospital. The police picked up two people, Nurunnabi and Apel Mahmud, suspecting them to be involved in the attack.
