Police arrested a man in Dhaka late on Sunday for allegedly selling forms to young people promising to appoint them as security volunteers for the upcoming World Cup.
Zahidul Islam alias Shawon was arrested by Mirpur police after dozens of his victims laid siege to his Mirpur section 6 residence alleging him of cheating them by identifying himself as an official of the Bangladesh Cricket Board.
One of his victims informed the matter to Rabeed Imam, BCB’s media manager, who immediately brought it to the notice of Col (retd) Mesbahuddin Serniabat, the security director of the tournament’s Local Organising Committee.
Serniabat rushed to the spot along with his BCB colleagues and caught Shawon red-handed with forged forms for volunteer appointment. He was later handed over to a patrol team of Mirpur police, led by sub-inspector Rafiqul Islam.
A victim named Dipto filed a case against Shawon, who was produced to the magistrate’s court in the morning and was sent to jail.
Police said Shawon mainly had targeted the students, who were very enthusiastic about working as volunteer during the World Cup. He allegedly took Tk 1,000 for each form.
Serniabat told New Age that the local political leaders had requested them not to hand over the man to the police, but they had no choice as it was related with the security issue of the World Cup.
‘It is a very serious issue for us. We cannot make any compromise with World Cup security,’ he said.
The incident underlined the importance of screening all the candidates before appointing the volunteers and Serniabat said they are very much aware of it.
‘I have three security liaison officers working under me. We will appoint 200 security volunteers and I can assure you that we will have proper screening before making the appointments,’ he said.
To avoid any unwanted incident Serniabat said they have decided to take all the volunteers from Bangladesh Ansar.
‘We are not even taking any volunteer from the Bangladesh National Cadet Corps this time. Ansar people are appointed by the government, so we will have all information about them in our hands. To be more precise, we will make a further screening with the help of the Special Branch of police,’ he said.
