Blogger, Ganajagaran Mancha activist seeks police security after sensing threat to life

Blogger and Ganajagaran Mancha activist Shammi Haque has filed a general diary (GD) with police seeking security after she felt a threat to her life.

The 23-year-old lodged the GD at Mohmmadpur Police Station on Friday afternoon, saying two youths had been following her, OC Md Jamal Uddin Meer told bdnews24.com.

Shammi writes blogs on website 'Istishon' (Station) against communalism and fundamentalism.

Her move comes after the brutal murders of four bloggers in the past seven months in Bangladesh.

According to her complaint, Shammi saw two youths, both around 28 years, following her on Thursday evening when she was on her way to Meena Bazar at Dhanmondi-27.

She told bdnews24.com: “I saw when I walked, they walked too. They stopped when I stopped. I went inside a nearby shopping mall when I realised that they were following me. They came in, too.”

The blog activist said she met one of her friends inside the mall and managed to take photos of the youths on her mobile phone.

She returned home after a while once the youths that were following her left the shopping mall.

“Bloggers are getting killed one by one. I’ve received threats on Facebook as well. I’ve filed the GD after considering everything.”

Shammi said she also gave the photos of those youths to police.

After the GD was filed, Mohammadpur police Sub-Inspector Md Jahid said they increased security in the area where the blogger lived.

On Aug 7, blogger Niladri Chatterjee Niloy was hacked to death in his east Gorhan home by four men wielding sharp weapons.
 
Niloy in a Facebook post in May had said that he was being followed and wanted to lodge a GD with police.
 
In the same post, he said a police official had refused to accept the complaint and told him to leave the country for a while to save his own life.
 
Niloy was the fourth blogger to have been killed in the same manner by suspected militants this year after Avijit Roy, Oyasiqur Rahman Babu and Ananta Bijoy Das.
 
The law-enforcers are yet to crack any of the murder cases or arrest the killers.
 
Blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider was murdered in February 2013 in Dhaka’s Mirpur. The proceedings of this case are still pending.
 
All the slain bloggers were supporters and activists of Ganajagaran Mancha, the popular movement demanding maximum penalty for war criminals and outlawing of religion-based politics.
 
They were mostly vocal against fundamentalism, communalism and radicalism through their writings.
 
Three days after Niloy’s murder, a Facebook page named ‘Ansar BD’, run by suspected Islamist militants, issued a threat against six Ganajagaran Mancha activists in Barisal by publishing their photos.
 
The page was, however, shut down after a GD was filed over the incident.
 
Following police’s failure in catching the killers, several other bloggers have said that they were unable to trust the law-enforcers.