Khoka out of jail

BNP Vice-Chairman Sadeque Hossain Khoka was released on bail from Dhaka Central Jail on Wednesday after languishing there for about two-and-a-half months.

Khoka, also a Convener of BNP's Dhaka metropolitan committee, secured six-month bail from the High Court on Sunday in all the nine cases filed against him.

Khoka was freed from the jail after the High Court’s bail order reached to the jail authorities.

As Khoka came out of Dhaka Central Jail, leaders and activists of BNP and its front organisations, led by the party’s Dhaka metropolitan committee Member Secretary Abdus Salam, received him with flower bouquets at the jail gate.

File Photo

Khoka’s personal assistant Monirul Islam told bdnews24.com that from the jail gate, the BNP leader left for his Gulshan residence in the city.

Members of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) had arrested the BNP leader from an Uttara house on Dec 4 last year amid the BNP’s strong demand for the restoration of the non-party caretaker government system before the 10th parliamentary elections.

He was first shown arrested in two cases filed with Shahbagh and Ramna Police Stations on charge of violence and torching vehicles respectively.

Later, he was implicated in seven other cases.

Addressing a joint meeting of the BNP’s Dhaka city unit on Oct 14 last year, Khoka had directed party leaders and activists to keep machetes and axes with them to counter any attacks while joining the Oct 25 rally in the capital.

The High Court on Sunday gave a six-month bail to the BNP leader in the case filed over instigating violence by asking the party men to arm themselves with machetes and axes.

Earlier, he secured bail from the High Court in all other arson cases – including a case filed over provoking the mayhem carried out by the radical Islamist outfit Hifazat-e Islam in the capital’s Motijheel on May 5.