Former state minister for information and broadcasting, Mohammad Ali Arafat has been arrested in connection with a murder case.
He was apprehended from the Gulshan area of the capital on Tuesday (27 August), said a Dhaka Metropolitan Police official.
The former minister faces multiple murder charges filed across various police stations in the country, stemming from the deaths caused by gunfire during the anti-discrimination student movement that ultimately resulted in the ousting of Sheikh Hasina.
Mohammad Ali Arafat has long been associated with the Awami League as a think tank.
He became a member of the Awami League's central executive committee in December 2022.
In July 2023, he was elected as a Member of Parliament for the Dhaka-17 constituency, defeating Ashraful Hossain Alam, popularly known as Hero Alom by a margin of 28,816 votes in a by-election.
Subsequently, he was elected as the Awami League candidate from the Dhaka-17 constituency in the 12th National Parliamentary Election and was later sworn in as a state minister in Sheikh Hasina's new cabinet.
Arafat's father, Mohammad Setab Uddin, was a director of Bangladesh Betar.
The former state minister married Shomi Kaiser, the daughter of Shahidullah Kaiser and Panna Kaiser, on 24 July 2008. The couple divorced in 2015, after which Arafat married Sharmin Mustari.
In addition to his political career, Mohammad Ali Arafat serves as a professor in the strategic management and policy department at the Canadian University of Bangladesh and is the chairman of the Suchinta Foundation.
Two weeks after the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) issued an order to banks to freeze his and his wife Sharmin Mustary's accounts.
It also asked banks to block all types of withdrawals through the individual or business accounts in their names.
