BNP Vice-Chairman Sadeque Hossain Khoka has got bail in three cases including one for instigating violence before the national election by ordering party activists to resist with machetes and axes any effort to stall their movement.
The bench of Justices Naima Haider and Zafar Ahmed on Sunday granted the bail for six months in each of the cases.Barrister Mahbub Uddin Khokan represented Khoka at the hearing, while Deputy Attorney General Khandaker Diliruzzaman stood for the state.
The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) had arrested Khoka, the BNP Dhaka metropolitan unit convenor from a Uttara residence on Dec 4 last year. He has been was in jail since.
Mahbub Uddin Khokan refused to confirm the number of cases Khoka had been given bail among all the cases against him. He feared the government might implicate the Khoka in new cases.
At a party meeting on Oct 14 last year, Sadeque Hossain Khoka had urged everyone to prepare with axes, spears, machetes, sticks and whatever they could lay their hands on if the Awami League attacked BNP leaders and activists anywhere.
Khoka was accused of instigating violence by giving this call after an arson attack in Dhaka’s Jatrabarhi area last December.
In one of the two other cases in which he got bail accuses him of instigating violence and the other accused him of helping Hifazat-e Islam by supplying water and food during their May 5 rally in Dhaka last year.
The BNP leader had denied the accusations before he was arrested, but the Hifazat Secretary General, Zunayed Babu Nagari had confirmed that Khoka had indeed provided water and food during their rally.
Sadeque Hossain Khoka had also expressed solidarity with Hifazat while representing the BNP at their rally in April last year.-bdnews24.com
