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Actress Mahi granted bail hours after detention order

  • Staff Correspondent
  • 19 March, 2023 12:00 AM
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Actress Mahi granted bail hours after detention order

A court in Gazipur granted bail to film actress Mahia Mahi on Saturday, hours after ordering her detention in a case filed against her under the Digital Security Act.

Gazipur Metropolitan Magistrate Court-5 has taken Mahi's pregnancy issue under special consideration and given her bail, said her lawyer Advocate Anwar Sadat.

After arresting Mahi in the capital in the morning, police produced her with a seven-day remand prayer before the court which ordered her detention during hearing at noon. She was granted bail in the afternoon. The police filed the case against Mahi and her husband Rakib Sarkar on Friday. Rakib remained fugitive.

According to the prosecution, Mahi and her husband have undermined law and order by spreading defamatory information on Facebook Live.

On the same day, a businessman in Gazipur filed another case against the Mahi couple.

Gazipur Metropolitan Police Commissioner Molla Nazrul Islam said after the arrest of actress Mahia Mahi, police sent her to the court of Gazipur Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) with a seven-day remand prayer.

The judge ordered police to send Mahi to jail without granting remand. She was sent to Gazipur District Jail on the court’s order.

Nazrul Islam said Mahi and her husband have committed the crime of degrading law and order by spreading false, fabricated, offensive, ugly and defamatory information.

Molla Nazrul made the allegation at a press conference on Saturday, hours after police arrested Mahi in Dhaka airport area following her return from a pilgrimage to Makkah.

Although Rakib accompanied Mahi during the pilgrimage, he did not return home with her.

According to the case statement, the couple made a Facebook live stream accusing Gazipur police of 'favouritism' after their showroom, Sony Raz Car Palace, was vandalised.

The couple is embroiled in a dispute over the land on which the showroom is situated and their adversaries have filed a criminal case against them, the Gazipur police chief added.

Following her marriage with Rakib, a member of the ruling party's relief and social welfare subcommittee in Gazipur, the film actor was appointed as the joint general secretary of the Bangabandhu Sangskritik Jote's central committee in 2021.

She also sought the Awami League's nomination to stand for the Chapainawabganj-2 parliamentary by-election.