Reporters of national and local media staged demonstration putting barricade on Sylhet-Sunamganj Road in the city on Thursday midnight to protest at the alleged incident of holding hostage a fellow for two hours by Chhatra League activists.
Kotwali police arrested a Chhatra League activist Siddiqur Rahman after the incident and filed a case in this regard Friday noon, sources in the police said.
The victim Mahbubur Rahman Ripon, Sylhet bureau chief of Independent Television, alleged that the Chhatra League activist Siddiqur Rahman and his two accomplices picked up him into an auto-rickshaw from Zindabazar in the city at 9:00pm.
Ripon claimed that the BCL men took him to the office of former Chhatra League leader Bidhan Kumar Saha at Pathantula and held him hostage there for two hours till 11:00pm demanding Tk 5 lakh.
Informed, fellows rushed to the Pathantula area at around 10:30pm and blocked the Sylhet-Sunamganj Road to protest at the incident and immediate release of Ripon.
Local ward councillor Makhlisur Rahman Kamran also reached the spot and handed Ripon over to his colleagues after releasing him from Bidhan’s office at around 11:00pm on Thursday.
But, the demonstrators did not agree to withdraw their barricade from the road until the arrest of the kidnappers of Ripon.
They withdrew the road blockade at around 1:30am early Friday after the Kotwali police arrested Siddiqur and pledged to arrest rest involved in kidnapping Ripon, sources in the police said.
Kotwali police officer-in-charge Ahmed Nasir Uddin told New Age of filing a case accusing former Chhatra League leader Bidhan Kumar Saha and Siddiqur and two of his party colleagues.
‘We are preparing to produce the arrested to the magistrate court side-by-side conducting drives to arrest the rests accused in the case,’ the police officer said.
-With New Age input
