AMN
Road Transport and Bridges Minister and ruling Awami League General Secretary Obaidul Quader has warned that those who vandalised the under construction sculpture of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib in Kushtia will face severe legal punishment.
Addressing a meeting of the Awami League through Video Conferencing, Obaidul Quader said that the government will not spare any one making derogatory remarks, comments or behaviour against the country’s constitution and laws, reports the official news agency BSS. He said that display and preservation of Bangabandhu’s portrait is a statutory matter under the constitution. Defaming Bangabandhu’s sculpture amounts to defamation of the country’s constitution.
The warning comes in the wake of an incident on Friday night when an under construction statue of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was vandalised in Kushtia town of Bangladesh. Subsequently, based on the CCTV footage, the police arrested two local madrasa students for the act along-with two others for hatching the conspiracy.
On Friday, a group of protestors clashed with the police after the Friday prayers at the Baitul Mukarram mosque in Dhaka. They attempted to block the road in support of the demand to demolish all sculptures in the country. Police thwarted the demonstration as they had no permission from the authorities.
In another incident, the statue of ‘Madhu da’ inside the Dhaka university campus was partially damaged a few days back. Madhusudan Dey, popularly known as Madhu Da, was killed by Pakistani 1971 during the infamous Operation Searchlight inside Dhaka University Campus.
Organisations affiliated to the Awami League held protests against the vandalisation of the statue of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman across several towns in Bangladesh including Dhaka on Sunday.
The incidents have taken place after the hardline Islamist organisation Hefazat-e-Islam Chief Junaid Babunagari and other office bearers threatened to tear down all sculptures in the country as they call it ‘un-Islamic’. They are opposing the government plan to erect a sculpture of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on the occasion of his birth centenary year ‘Mujib Borsho’ currently being observed in Bangladesh.