Police find Hifazat chief Babunagari ‘responsible’ for ex-supremo Shafi’s death

The Police Bureau of Investigation has submitted a report holding 43 people, including Hifazat-e Islam chief Junaid Babunagari, responsible for the death of the organisation’s former head Shah Ahmed Shafi.

Chattogram Bureaubdnews24.com
Published : 12 April 2021, 01:14 PM
Updated : 12 April 2021, 01:14 PM

Banaj Kumar Majumder, a deputy inspector general of police and the head of the PBI, disclosed the information on Monday after the submission of the report to a court in Chattogram.     

Nazmul Hasan, a superintendent of police at the PBI in Chattogram, said the investigators had interviewed 22 people and taken into account the vandalism at Al Jamiatul Ahlia Darul Uloom Moinul Islam, known as the Hathazari Baro Madrasa, in Chattogram.

Neither Banaj nor Nazmul would reveal further details.

Shafi was forced to step down as the director general of the Hathazari madrasa in Chattogram in a meeting of its governing council on Sept 17, 2020 after hundreds of students demonstrated demanding the removal of his son Anas Madani as an assistant director of the institution.

Besides Anas, the council sacked teacher Maulana Nurul Islam, a Shafi loyalist, wresting control of Bangladesh’s largest Islamic school from Shafi.

Shafi was taken to a hospital in the port city immediately after the meeting and he passed away the following day at a Dhaka hospital.

Anas said his father died of “heart failure” due to “the stress from the unexpected” incident.

Md Moin Uddin, the brother-in-law to the late Hifazat supremo Shafi, started the case against 36 people, mostly followers of the hardline group’s current chief Babunagari, with the court.

The accused also included the group’s Joint Secretary General Mamunul Haque, who has been at the centre of recent controversies over his “wives” and threats to demolish Bangabandhu’s statues.

In the case, Shafi’s family alleged that those leading the demonstration before Shafi’s resignation had threatened to “seriously harm him” if he had not expelled Anas. They allegedly harassed a sick Shafi in different ways.

Shafi fell unconscious when they removed his nasal cannula at the madrasa on the day of the meeting, his brother-in-law Moin said in the case. The family could not bring him out of the madrasa for treatment despite attempts, he alleged.