Dhaka Metropolitan Police has changed its statement over the arrest of former Bangladesh Army Major General Ziaul Ahsan in the space of six hours, triggering a controversy.
At about 1:35pm on Friday, the DMP, in a message, said that it had acted on a tip-off to arrest Zia, widely accused of perpetrating many enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings during the regime of deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina, in the Khilkhet area in a case filed with the New Market police station.聽
At about 8:30pm, DMP corrected its statement, saying that Zia, also a former director general of the National Telecommunication Monitoring Centre, took shelter in an army barrack, fearing his聽 personal safety and that the army had handed him over to police in the wee hours of Friday, facilitating his arrest.
Earlier in the day, the Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Court placed Zia on an eight-day remand for interrogation in a murder case filed with the New Market police station.
Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Arafatul Rakib passed the order after sub-inspector Md Sajib Miah produced him before the court amid tight security, seeking a 10-day remand.
Lawyers present in the court said that police had told the court that Zia was arrested in the capital鈥檚 Khilkhet area.
Asked about the change in the DMP press release over Zia鈥檚 arrest, DMP assistant commissioner for media and public relations Jahangir Kabir said that police headquarters had asked the wing to issue a revised press release with the new information.
During his remand hearing, Zia told the court that a team of the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence picked him up from home on the night of August 7 and kept him in a detention centre now known as Aynaghor for eight days until Thursday night.
The families of the victims, who were forced to disappear during the three consecutive terms of the Awami League government, demanded capital punishment for Zia, alleging that he was one of the key officials involved in disappearance incidents.
A day after the August 5 fall of the Sheikh Hasina government amid a student-led mass uprising, Zia was relieved of his duties on August 6.
Zia was commissioned into the Bangladesh Army in 1991. He served in the Rapid Action Battalion and National Security Intelligence before joining the NTMC in 2017.