The Special Branch (SB) of Police on Sunday issued an apology over the reported harassment of Nurul Kabir, editor of a Bangladesh-based English daily, New Age, at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport (HSIA) in the capital recently.
The SB started investigating the incident and withdrew the official concerned, according to a spokesperson of the interim government's chief advisor's (CA) office.
Such an 'unfortunate' incident had occurred due to a 'block list' formed during the past authoritarian regime, according to the statement issued by SB. "We have now expedited our efforts to clean up the list."
Authorities named several thousand people in the list with the intention to harass during their overseas travel or stop them from travelling, sources said. It implies that the practice of harassing listed individuals in the concerned law enforcing departments led to the incident the journalist said he had faced.
The SB started omitting the names of people, which include politicians, people with different opinions, journalists and rights activists, from the list after the interim government took over.
But the process is mostly followed manually resulting in some names remaining on it, according to the statement.
"Once again, we are sorry for the unfortunate incident. Bangladesh police are friends of the people and want to serve the country in an exemplary manner," the SB statement added.
mirmostafiz@yahoo.com