BNP leader Mizanur Rahman remanded for two days over ‘election conspiracy’

BNP leader Mizanur Rahman has been remanded in judicial custody for two days after his arrest on charges of conspiring to make the Gazipur city polls controversial.

Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Md Mazharul Islam issued an order allowing the police to interrogate Mizan.

Police detectives arrested Mizan, a retired army officer, at his Gulshan home on Monday night after two audio clips of his alleged phone conversations spread on the internet.

Four others were also arrested over the same allegation in Ashulia on Tuesday, police said.

The magistrate also remanded Md Shafiqul Islam, 43, Md Dinnat, 26, and Md Asad Ali, 22 for one day each.

Md Zunaid Hossain Joy, 16, was sent to Tongi Juvenile Correction Centre.

Md Saiful Islam, a sub-inspector of Dhaka Metropolitan Police's Detective Branch, started a case against the five under the Special Powers Act.

After two leaked phone conversations were published on the social media, police said they checked one of those and claimed one of the voices was that of Mizan.

In the audio clips, a person believed to be Mizan is heard ‘plotting violence’ during the polls that were held on Tuesday.

In the case, the police said they have specific information that Mizan held a meeting with the others accused in the case at Kolabagan Club in Dhanmondi on the eve of the voting on Monday.

Mizan instructed the others to stuff ballot papers for the ruling Awami League’s boat logo, capture the act in cameras installed in wristwatch and publish the video on the social media, according to the case dossier.

The BNP has alleged the government made and spread ‘flimsy’ audio clips after ‘a failed attempt of enforced disappearance on Mizan’.