Police arrest Hifazat leader Shahinur in Sylhet

Police have arrested Hifazat leader and former Sunamganj-3 MP Shahinur Pasha Chowdhury in Sylhet.

Shahinur was taken into custody around 12:45 am on Friday from the city’s Bankalapara area, near the Abbasi Jamme Mosque by a team from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), bdnews24.com reports.

“A CID team from Dhaka detained him,” Sylhet Airport Police chief Khan Mohammad Moinul Zakir said.

“He was taken to Dhaka straight away.”

Shahinur, the central vice president of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Bangladesh, was the legal affairs secretary of the recently disbanded Hifazat central committee.

It is unclear what charges Shahinur was arrested under, but several dozen Hifazat leaders, including Joint Secretary General Mamunul Haque, have been arrested over nationwide violence and vandalism by Hifazat activists in March.

But this is the first instance of an incumbent leader being arrested from Sylhet. Hifazat-e Islam, a radical Islamist group, staged protests across the country to oppose a state visit from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Protests lurched into violence, leading to deaths in Dhaka, Narayanganj, Brahmanbaria and Chattogram.

Those who have been arrested over these incidents have also been accused of having ties to violence in Motijheel in 2013.

Shahinur was elected MP from the Sunamganj-3 seat left vacant by the death of Foreign Minister Abdus Samad Azad in 2005.