Rights organisation Maayer Daak on Tuesday sought a formal apology from the Bangladesh Army and the interim government over Monday鈥檚 raid at its office cum co-founder鈥檚 home in Dhaka and picking up of the co-founder鈥檚 brother from there.
The organisation, a platform of the families of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings, also demanded action against the army personnel who led the raid in the capital鈥檚 Shaheenbag area for conducting the raid and the chief of the Inter-Services Public Relation Directorate for issuing a false statement over the raid.
The platform鈥檚 co-founder Sanjida Islalm Tulee made the demands at a press conference at the Dhaka Reporters Unity in the capital Tuesday afternoon.
A team of army personnel raided the office of Maayer Daak cum Sanjida鈥檚 home Monday afternoon, picked up her elder brother Saiful Islam Shamol and returned him to the family after about two and a half hours.
Addressing the press conference, Sanjida wanted to know whether joint forces could enter any house without any document as the army officials did not show them any arrest warrant during the raid.
She wanted to know how law enforcement agencies could keep an adolescent girl and an elderly woman in separate rooms at gunpoint in a new Bangladesh.
She alleged that the presence of female officials was requisite to talk to women during a raid but the army officials did not follow the rule.
鈥榃e believe that it is a new tactic for creating pressure on victim families who have started filing cases on the incidents of enforced disappearances,鈥� Tulee said and alleged that the army personnel, during the raid, also tried to take away the hard disk of the CCTV footages of the whole incident.
The ISPR in a statement on Monday evening said that they took Saiful to the nearby army camp for interrogation as they received an allegation that the man was involved in extortion in the area.
It said that Saiful was accused in a case for possessing illegal arms and he was in jail in the case.
ISPR said that the army personnel did not misbehave with any of the family members.
Sanjida claimed that no case was filed against her brother and the ISPR statement was 鈥榗ompletely false鈥�.聽
Neither the ISPR director nor the assistant director for army could be reached over the phone for comments on Maayer Daak鈥檚 allegations. They also did not respond to text messages.
Sanjiba鈥檚 sister Afroza Islam Akhi, also a co-founder of Maayer Daak, said that she was present in the house during the raid.
She said that she did not expect such behaviour from army officials after the fall of the Sheikh Hasina regime amid a student-led mass uprising on August 5.
Bangladesh Nationalist Party executive committee member Tabith Awal, rights activist Rezaur Rahman Lenin, Jatiya Mukti Council general secretary Faizul Hakim Lala, and Gono Odhikar Parishad faction general secretary Muhammad Rashed Khan, among others, also spoke.
