Fire at NCP MP’s home sparks uproar in JS

Detailed summary

Commotion erupted in parliament yesterday as the home minister and the opposition chief whip were locked in a heated debate over whether MP Nusrat Tabassum’s village home had…

Commotion erupted in parliament yesterday as the home minister and the opposition chief whip were locked in a heated debate over whether MP Nusrat Tabassum’s village home had caught fire or been torched.

The fire incident took place at the ancestral home of Tabassum, joint convener of National Citizen Party and lawmaker from the reserved seat for women, in Kushtia’s Daulatpur.

Five rooms of a tin-roofed house were gutted in the incident around 12:20am yesterday, said Khaledur Rahman, officer-in-charge of Daulatpur Police Station.

The house was used to keep cattle, goats, ducks, and chickens. A caretaker also stayed there, the OC said.

Tabassum’s parents and other family members live in a three-storey building nearby.

In the afternoon, Tabassum alleged, the fire was a “premeditated act of arson”.

Around three hours before the incident, a threatening post was made from the Facebook account of Kushtia district Chhatra League president, who is hiding, she told a press briefing in her ancestral home.

The NCP leader said she received several threatening phone calls before the attack. She subsequently filed a general diary with Dhanmondi Police Station in Dhaka on Tuesday, but continued to get threats even after filing the complaint.

CCTV footage showed four consecutive explosions at the house around 12:00am, she said.

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