Chinmoy Krishna Das, a well-known Bangladesh Hindu and leader of the Bangladesh Sammilito Sanatani Jagaran Jot, was granted bail on Wednesday by the country's High Court in connection with a sedition case.
This came after a bench of Justice Atoar Rahman and Justice Ali Reza made the decision after hearing a final hearing.
A rule following Das's plea for bail was earlier this year ordered by the High Court, asking them to justify why his case was not a good candidate for bail.
April 30 was set as the hearing date for the rule, and during hearings, the Court made the rule absolute, thus giving him approval of bail, a report published by Prothom Alo, Bangladesh's top Bengali daily, has stated.
Das was detained on November 25 at Dhaka's Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport on sedition charges. He had been in jail ever since, despite growing public and international pressure for his release.
His arrest by the Dhaka Metropolitan Police sparked widespread condemnation and brought global attention to the persecution of Bangladesh's Hindu minority.
Besides his link with the Bangladesh Jatiya Hindu Mohajot (BJHM), a 23-member Hindu religious party, Chinmoy Krishna Das is also linked to the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). His arrest triggered several protests demanding that he be released immediately.
The situation of the Hindus in Bangladesh has deteriorated significantly after the removal of the Awami League-led government of outgoing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The caretaker administration headed by former President Muhammad Yunus, who took oath on August 8, has been suffering successive bouts of violence from individual theft and arson attacks to land grabbing and intimidation forcing Hindus to flee.
While Yunus and his religious affairs adviser, A.F.M. Khalid Hossain, have highlighted the interim government's promise of communal peace, minority communities remain under severe threat. The violence that followed Hasina's exit has intensified deep concern among Bangladesh's Hindus.
A recent report by the Dhaka-based human rights group Ain O Salish Kendra (AsK) logged 147 attacks on Hindu businesses, temples, and homes. In them, 408 homes were attacked, including 36 cases of arson. Additionally, 113 attacks on minority businesses, 32 attacks on places of worship, including Ahmadiyya, and 92 separate incidents of idol desecration within temples were logged.
Communal violence has broken out in a number of areas in Bangladesh, and Hindu areas are the special target, with homes, shops, and religious institutions attacked—some of them set ablaze.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had addressed these trends just earlier this month when he was in Bangkok speaking with interim leader Muhammad Yunus at the BIMSTEC Summit. Modi raised concerns about the security and well-being of minorities in Bangladesh, particularly Hindus.
India has always urged Bangladesh to ensure safety to its minority communities and hopes that the Yunus-led caretaker government will act strongly against the perpetrators of the current violence.
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