Sheikh Hasina’s motorcade attack convict arrested

Staff Correspondent: – Detectives on Friday arrested a convict in a case filed over the attack on the motorcade of the then opposition Awami League leader and incumbent prime minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina in Satkhira in 2002.  Convicted Arifur Rahman Ranju had been on the run since the verdict in February 2021.   He was arrested at a spot in Dhaka’s Hazaribagh area, said Dhaka Metropolitan Police additional commissioner for Detective Branch AKM Hafiz Akhter in a press briefing on Friday.

Ranju was a Chhatra Dal leader in 1993 and he had led the attack on the then opposition leader, the DB officer said.  A former Chhatra Dal leader from a Satkhira college, Ranju was sentenced with 10 years’ imprisonment in the case.

Satkhira Chief Judicial Magistrate Court in February 2021 sentenced 50 leaders and activists of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its front organisations, including BNP’s central leader and former lawmaker Habibul Islam Habib, to various jail terms for attacking the motorcade of AL president and the then opposition leader Sheikh Hasina in 2002.

During the verdict, 34 of them were present in the courtroom. The others were on the run.  Sheikh Hasina’s motorcade came under attack in front of the Kalaroa upazila parishad complex on August 30 at about 10:30am, 2002, while she was on her way to Jashore from Satkhira after visiting a rape victim.  Aside from the bomb attack and vandalism of cars, gunshots were also fired at the then opposition leader.