N'ganj teacher Shyamal Kanti granted bail

Schoolteacher Shyamal Kanti Bhakta walked out of jail yesterday afternoon after staying behind bars for eight days.

Earlier in the day, judge of Narayanganj District and Sessions Judge's Court granted Shyamal bail till July 20 in a bribery case.

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The teacher left Narayanganj Central Jail around 5:45pm.

Shyamal, headmaster of Piyar Sattar Latif High School in Bandar area, was forced to do squats holding his ears in presence of local Jatiya Party lawmaker AKM Salim Osman in May last year.

Talking to journalists, Shyamal said, “I can't say what will happen to me. If anything happens, you keep in your mind that the Osman family is behind it. I am really concerned about my safety because my security [policemen] was withdrawn on April 1."

Shyamal's wife Sabita Rani Halder and his lawyer Shakhawat Hossain Khan were present at the jail gate.

Shyamal said he neither did anything wrong nor supported anything like that. He had to go to jail due to a conspiracy. It was his fate. It was done to humiliate him. He had been humiliated earlier too, he said.

The whole nation knew the truth, he said, thanking the role of the media in the incident.

Shyamal demanded his acquittal of the case and a proper trial, claiming that he did not do anything wrong. 

He also sought help from the prime minister, the chief justice, the health minister, the education minister and others concerned in this regard.

On May 24, a Narayanganj court issued an arrest warrant for Shyamal after taking bribery charges into cognisance.

That afternoon, the court sent him to jail after rejecting his bail prayer.

Later, Shyamal submitted a bail prayer to Narayanganj District and Sessions Judge's Court, and the court set yesterday for hearing the petition.

The next hearing of the case will be on July 13.

The case was filed by Morsheda Begum, an English teacher at the same school, on July 14 last year.

According to the case statement, Shyamal took Tk 1.35 lakh in bribe from Morsheda, making a false promise of having her included in the monthly pay order (MPO) system.

On April 17 this year, police submitted a charge sheet to the court against Shyamal.

On May 13 last year, Shyamal was forced to do squats holding his ears in presence Salim Osman over an allegation that the headmaster made derogatory comments about religion while meting out corporal punishment to a student.

But the teacher has been rejecting the allegation.

A few days after the incident, the school's managing committee forced Shyamal to step down over the allegation that he had hurt “religious sentiments” of Muslims.

But an education ministry probe found the allegation false, and Shyamal was reinstated as headmaster.