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Published : 31 Jul 2024, 08:58 PM
Dhaka Metropolitan Police has transferred Additional Commissioner Harunor Rashid from the Detective Branch as its head to crime and operations amid criticism for posting photos of him eating at office with quota protest leaders, who he said were in safe custody.
Additional Commissioner Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman has replaced Harun at the DB, according to an office order issued on Wednesday, two days after a High Court judge asked the DB not to “mock the nation by dining with those in custody”.
Additional Commissioner K Mohid Uddin, who was in charge of crime and operations, has been transferred to logistics, finance and procurement.
On Jul 26, three coordinators of the student movement for quota reforms – Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud, and Abu Baker Majumder - were taken to the DB office in the capital’s Minto Road from the hospital.
The following day, coordinators Sarjis Alam, Hasnat Abdullah, and Nusrat Tabassum were also taken into DB custody.
On Sunday, DB chief Harun posted several pictures of himself dining with some of the coordinators of the quota reform movement on Facebook.
His caption, roughly translated into English,, read: “Coordinators of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement for the quota reform movement were not safe. So I brought them to the DB office and spoke to them.”
The High Court bench of Justice Mustafa Zaman Islam and Justice SM Masud Hossain Dolon on Monday heard a writ petition seeking a court order not to open fire on protesters and the release of the six coordinators of the quota reform movement.
At the hearing, Additional Attorney General Mehedi Hasan Chowdhury said: “Six coordinators of the quota reform movement are in the DB’s custody for their own safety. Pictures of them eating with forks are being published in the media.”
The senior judge then remarked: “They take whoever they want to the DB office and then make them sit at a dining table. Don’t make a mockery of the nation like this.”
Harun, a former general secretary of the Police Service Association, has made headlines numerous times, first for beating up the BNP's former chief whip Zainul Abdin Farroque during a demonstration in front of the parliament building in 2011.
The BNP had lodged complaints against Harun when he had been working in Gazipur during local government elections in 2016. The government had withdrawn him only to reinstate him later on.
In 2013, then home minister Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir said the government had thought about the incident of Harun assaulting Farroque before nominating the police officer for the President Police Medal.
Later in 2019, he was also embroiled in controversy while serving as the superintendent of Narayanganj when he arrested the wife and teenage son of Amber Group Chairman Shawkat Aziz Russell.
Harun continued to make headlines after his transfer to the DB, with photos of him dining with people seeking justice – from injured BNP leader Gayeshwar Roy Chowdhury to social media star Ashraful Alom aka Hero Alom to Dhallywood actress Apu Biswas.
