Shawdesh Desk:

The Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit has sought bank account details from Executive director of Centre for Governance Studies Zillur Rahman.

The Bangladesh Bank’s intelligence agency also sought information of the bank account of the CGS and asked to send the transaction records in five working days, according to a senior official of the BFIU.

Zillur Rahman is an anchor of a popular talk show titled Tritiyo Matra on a private television channel.

The BFIU on Wednesday sent letters to different banks and financial institutions seeking information on all types of accounts held by Zillur and the CGS and credit card transactions by them.

The BFIU in the letter asked to send details including transaction records of bank accounts and cards of them and it also asked to inform them if any money is deposited in the bank accounts of Zillur and CGS from abroad.

Earlier in December past year, police visited Zillur’s village home at Gosairhat of Shariatpur.

At that time, in a Facebook post Zillur said, ‘The visit intended to scare me, my family and neighbours, and hinder my work as an anchor and works related to the think tank CGS.’

Zillur said that the police visited the village home to ‘gather information’ about him.

‘I live in Dhaka, I anchor a talk show (Tritiyo Matra) on a widely available and popular television channel on a regular basis, and have an office in Dhaka. If police needed to know anything about me, they could have visited me or contacted me over the phone. Yet they visited my ancestral home. It caused enormous inconvenience to the people of the locality, and to my extended family,’ Zillur said.

‘It’s not only a deplorable act but also deeply disconcerting to see that the police are being used to silence my voice,’ he added.

Zillur urged the government to investigate these kinds of actions, and stop any future occurrences.

CGS has recently hosted Bay of Bengal Conversation in Dhaka city with participants of representatives from different countries, including diplomats of different countries working in Bangladesh. Several ministers and the Awami League leaders avoided the programme.