BNP leader Gayeshwar Roy released on bail two months after arrest

Senior BNP leader Gayeshwar Chandra Roy has been released from prison on bail two months after his arrest.

BNP Assistant Organising Secretary Abdus Salam Azad told bdnews24.com that Roy was freed from Dhaka Central Jail in Keraniganj on Tuesday evening after the High Court granted him bail.

Roy’s daughter-in-law and a member of the BNP’s Central Executive Committee, Nipun Roy, was among the leaders and activists who received the senior leader at the jail gates.

Police detained the BNP National Standing Committee member in Dhaka’s Gulshan on Jan 30, as the government expanded its crackdown on BNP leaders and activists ahead of the Feb 8 verdict against their chief Khaleda Zia.

His detention came hours after the party activists attacked police and snatched two comrades from their custody near the High Court when Khaleda appeared in a special court for the hearing of a graft case in Bakshibazar.

Roy had called on the BNP activists to protest against the trial of Khaleda after the court set Feb 8 for the delivery of the verdict in another corruption case against the former prime minister.

Roy had threatened to topple the government to free Khaleda in case she was convicted ‘wrongly’.

The BNP leader was later shown arrested in a case over the attack on police.

Khaleda has been in jail since Feb 8 when the special court sentenced her to five years in jail for corruption in the Zia Orphanage Trust case.