BANGLADESH

The opposition has accused the ruling Awami League of threatening BNP leaders and activists in some areas of Sylhet district ahead of its road march to the city.

Speaking at a press conference at the party's Naya Paltan headquarters in the city on Saturday, BNP joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi alleged their leaders and activists were being threatened and provoked in Sreemongal and Moulvibazar areas.

"But such attempts of the ruling party (Awami League) won't work before mass gatherings," he added.

Rizvi said there would be huge human gatherings during their road march programme. "Our party leaders and activists have been received with great enthusiasm everywhere," he added.

The BNP leader said that party chief Khaleda Zia would address nine street rallies in Narayanganj, Kishoreganj, Brahmanbaria, Habiganj and Moulvibazar districts – which lie on the Dhaka-Sylhet highway – during the road march to Sylhet scheduled for Oct 10.

The opposition chief, who will lead the Dhaka-Sylhet road march, will address a public meeting on Sylhet Alia Madrasa ground the next day.

Khaleda is scheduled to start for the road march from her Gulshan residence at 9:30am on Monday.

Khaleda announced the road marches at a rally on Sep 27 as part of the party's agitation programme to protest holding of next general election without reinstating caretaker government.

Trading on the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) has begun with the general index down by 80 points in the opening hour of the week's first business day.

The index lost 80.06 points or 1.39 percent to 5647.73 points around 12:01pm on Sunday.

Of the 226 issues traded until then, only 28 advanced, 193 declined and five remained unchanged.

THe turnover stood at Tk 754 million.

The index plummeted 57.68 points or 1.00 percent to 5670.11 around 11:38 am.

The stock market has been on a low for almost a year now, and no measure by regulators, government or major investors seems to be able to prop the market up.

Spiralling fall in the last two-and-a-half months has shaved 1000 points off the DSE general index.

The index has been falling since January. It turned around once in July but has since faced a massive fall.

Senior leaders of Awami League have separately met with ex-MP Shamim Osman and former Narayanganj municipality mayor Selina Hayat Ivy to choose one of them as a party candidate in the Narayanganj City Corporation (NCC) polls.

They met the seniors at the parliament's deputy leader Syeda Sajeda Chowdhury's Gulshan residence on Sunday morning.

After the meeting Shamim told : "I can't say anything on the issue now as I've been asked not to [say anything]. I was alone there. She (Ivy) went there after [I left]"

The two leaders of the ruling party's Narayanganj unit are among the aspirants from Awami League who are vying for the mayoral post in the newly formed corporation.

After prime minister and party chief Sheikh Hasina met the central leaders to discuss the issue on Saturday, joint general secretary Mahbub-ul-Alam Hanif had said the two candidates would sit with Sajeda at 10am Sunday.

"Hopefully there will be a final decision on party support during this meeting," he had said.

The Jagannath University has opened after an extended Puja vacation with the celebration of the prime minister's assurance that the government will fund its academic activities.

The students on Sunday staged a large procession to celebrate the announcement to amend the Jagannath University Act -2005 by scrapping its Article 27 (4), which stipulates that the university will have to generate its own revenue to run its activities.

Following a news report that the government is moving to implement the act, the students got angry and resorted to street protests from Sep 25 demanding that authorities repeal the provision.

The chaos had triggered violent street protests and prompted police to detain at least 17 protestors who were later freed on bail.

The university authorities decided to advance the Durga Puja holidays and ordered the university shut from Sep 29 until Oct 6 to tame tension on the campus.

The students said the university increased their semester fees from Tk 3,500 to Tk 20,000 to raise its internal revenue as per the act.

Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday cleared her administration's position over the disputes when a delegation of the university led by its vice chancellor Mesbahuddin Ahmed met her.

Ashraful Islam, a student of political science department, told bdnews24.com on Sunday, "It's joyful since I find myself as a student of a fully-fledged public university."

Physics department student Billal Hossain said, "We were mentally stressed but we are relieved now."

Two of the Awami League's Narayanganj City Corporation (NCC) mayoral candidates will meet parliament's deputy leader on Sunday morning to finalise who gets party support for the polls.

"The two candidates will sit with the parliament deputy leader at 10am Sunday at the party president's Dhanmondi office," the ruling party's joint general secretary Mahbub-ul-Alam Hanif told reporters on Saturday.

"Hopefully there will be a final decision on party support at this meeting," he said.

Former MP Shamim Osman and former Naryanganj municipality mayor Selina Hayat Ivy are among other Awami League members who submitted nomination papers for the elections to the newly formed NCC.

Prime minister and party chief Sheikh Hasina has already held a meeting with the two but failed to reach an accord.

Hasina sat at her political office at Dhanmondi on Saturday and held a meeting with the central leadership.

"She instructed us to strengthen the party at the grassroots," Hanif told the press in the evening.

Hasina approved of organising committees for two metropolitan and three district level conferences, he said.

"She also said Awami League believes in democracy and BNP should be able to observe its road march programme peacefully," Hanif said.

The investigations into the Sept 7 blast at the entrance to a court in Indian capital New Delhi has spread to Bangladesh, with tacit cooperation between the counterterrorism agencies of the two countries leading to the arrest of a key suspect in the case.

The arrest also once again brought under focus the terror networks of the extremist organization Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami and Hizbul Mujahideen across the sub-continent.

Indian government officials, however, did not disclose if the purported disappearance and interrogation of four Kashmiri students from a medical college in Sylhet were also linked to the probe into the Delhi High Court blast.

After a Kashmiri student of a medical college in Bangladesh was arrested by India's National Investigation Agency in connection with the blast, his father claimed that he himself had asked his son to return to India and handed the latter over to the investigators at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi soon after his arrival from Dhaka.

The NIA produced Wasim Akram Malik to a court in Delhi on Friday and he was remanded to agency's custody until Oct 21. Wasim is the son of a government official based in Kishtwar in Jammu and Kashmir and he was studying in a medical college in Bangladesh.

Wasim's parents, however, said that an incarcerated Hizbul Mujahideen militant, whom they got arrested for kidnapping their other son Junaid in 2010, set police after their family after the blast in front of Delhi High Court. Jammu and Kashmir police, however, described Junaid, who is yet to be traced, as a militant of the Hizbul Mujahideen.

The blast at the entrance to the Delhi court killed at least 15 and left many others injured.

Kishtwar came under the focus after investigations revealed that an email purportedly circulated by HuJI among media organisations to claim responsibility for the blast had in fact been sent from the town in Jammu and Kashmir.

Wasim was the third Kashmiri to be arrested in connection with blast. Earlier, two youths, Aamir Abbas and Abid Hussain, were arrested in Kishtwar.

Wasim's father Riaz ul Hassan Malik, an employee of India's state-owned National Hydroelectric Power Corporation, told journalists that he had received a letter from police in Kishtwar informing him that the NIA wanted to question his son in connection with the Delhi High Court blast.

"I made arrangements so that the NIA officials can talk to my son Wasim, who was in Bangladesh, over telephone. He readily agreed to cooperate with the investigation and I asked him to return. I received him at the airport in Delhi and then handed him over to the NIA officials," said Riaz ul Hassan Malik, who had in November 2010 lodged a complaint with the Jammu and Kashmir police that his youngest son Junaid had been kidnapped by Hizbul Mujahideen militants.

Police action on the basis of his complaint had led to the unearthing of a recruitment module of the terrorist networks and three Hizbul Mujahideen operatives, including one Azhar Ali, had been arrested. Police, however, could not trace Junaid.

The NIA purportedly started suspecting Wasim's role in the Delhi High Court blast after they questioned incarcerated Azhar Ali in a jail in Kashmir.

Wasim's family claimed that he had been in Kishtwar on the day of the blast at Delhi High Court and had not only withdrawn money from bank ATMs but also shopped in the malls, where he might have been caught on CCTV.

"My son is innocent and he had nothing to do with the blast in Delhi," said his mother Shamima Begum, who is a headmistress of a government school in Kishtwar.

Wasim, who had been in Kishtwar on Eid vacation, had gone back to Bangladesh on Sept 9, just two days after the blast.

Due to tacit cooperation between the security agencies of Bangladesh and India earlier in 2009 and 2010, a number of top leaders of insurgent organisations active in northeastern Indian states of Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and Manipur had landed in the custody of the law-enforcing agencies of India.

In his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Sept 24, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh had upheld the security cooperation between his country and Bangladesh as an example.

"In South Asia, there are encouraging signs of cooperation in the area of security, as exemplified in India's growing cooperation with Bangladesh. Such cooperation is adding to the security of both our countries," he had said.