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Blasts at strategic places in city

Staff Correspondent
Unidentified miscreants blasted crude bombs in front of the houses of Supreme Court Justice SK Sinha and Law Minister Shafique Ahmed in the city yesterday ahead of the 60-hour hartal enforced by BNP-led 18-party alliance from today.
The law minister suspected that Jamaat-Shibir men blasted the bombs to stop the ongoing war crimes trial.
A key component of the 18-party alliance, Jamaat-e-Islami has been demanding the government stop the trial. Five of its top leaders have already been convicted of committing genocide and crimes against humanity during the Liberation War. Some other leaders were facing similar charges.
Justice Sinha, one of the members the Supreme Court's Appellate Division bench, has been dealing with the appeals of war crimes convicts. He is the senior most judge of the Appellate Division next to the chief justice. The law ministry deals with the formation of war crimes tribunals, enactment and amendment of war crimes laws and appointment of prosecutors.
In an apparent bid to create panic, miscreants also blasted bombs in some strategically important places in the capital, including in front of the residences of another minister and the chief election commissioner, offices of cops and several media houses.
Criminals hurled a handmade bomb at the residence of Justice Sinha on Central Lane of Kakrail area around 10:30am. However, none was injured in the explosion, said Shibli Noman, assistant commissioner (Ramna) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police.
Supreme Court Registrar AKM Shamsul Islam, who visited the spot immediately after the blast, told The Daily Star that Justice Sinha was at home when the bomb went off hitting the boundary wall of his residence.
The judge recently received several death threats over the phone, he added.
Justice Sinha was one of the members of the five-member SC bench which handed death
sentence to Jamaat leader Abdul Quader Mollah for committing crimes against humanity in 1971.
He is also dealing with the appeal filed by convicted war criminal Jamaat leader Delawar Hossain Sayedee. In both the cases, defence petitioned the SC to keep Justice Sinha out of the bench, but the SC rejected the petitions.
Two bombs were blasted at the space between the building and the boundary wall of the Indira Road residence of Law Minister Shafique Ahmed around 7:10pm.
The minister said he was at home when the bombs went off near his residence. Quoting the on-duty police at his residence, he said the miscreants came by two black cars and left the spot immediately after blasting the bombs.
Informed by on-duty cops, Sher-e-Bangla Nagar police inspected the spot. A case was filed with the police station in this connection last night.
In Comilla, a cocktail blasted near the residence of the law minister at the town's Ashoktala around 10:30pm, said Ali Ashraf Bhuiyan, additional superintendent of Comilla police.
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