Nusrat expresses anger over Salahuddin’s remarks on fire at her house

Reserved-seat MP from National Citizen Party (NCP) Nusrat Tabassum has expressed anger over Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed's remarks in Parliament on a fire at her village home in Kushtia, questioning why he had tried to downplay the incident.

“Why did the home minister try to downplay this attack?” she said in a Facebook post.

Nusrat raised the question after the home minister’s response to a question from Opposition Chief Whip and NCP Convener Nahid Islam in Parliament earlier on Thursday.

In response to Nahid's question, Salahuddin said an investigation was underway to determine whether the house had caught fire accidentally or whether someone had deliberately set it ablaze.

He also said no evidence of a petrol bomb explosion had been found at the scene.

The initial assessment suggested that an electrical short circuit was the most likely cause of the fire, as the house had remained unoccupied for a long time and its electrical wiring was old, the minister said.

Reacting to Salahuddin’s remarks, Nusrat said he had declared a residential house inhabited by six to seven people, including children, and several cattle to be abandoned while speaking in Parliament.

She also criticised his suggestion that an electrical short circuit could have caused the fire, saying the site was a pile of rubble filled with the smell of burnt petrol.

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“Perhaps, if someone does not own a luxurious flat worth several crores of taka, their home can easily be considered abandoned. Not everyone can multiply their wealth while living abroad,” the MP wrote.

Expressing her belief that supporters of the Awami League, whose activities are now banned, had carried out the attack, she questioned why the home minister had sought to downplay it.

“If my house, where seven people were sleeping, is considered abandoned, are Dhaka University's Faculty of Business Studies, buses in Farmgate or Kamalapur Railway Station also abandoned?” Nusrat wrote, ending her post with an expression of disgust.

A fire burned down five of the eight rooms of a tin-shed house of Nusrat at Bogoan in Daulatpur upazila of Kushtia in the early hours of Thursday, with her family alleging that the fire originated after four petrol bombs were hurled at the house.