Dhaka: Four hours after the enforcement of dawn-to-dusk hartal enforced by Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami BNP on Thursday extended its support to it.

BNP senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi came up with the announcement at a press briefing at party’s Nayapaltan Central Office in the city.

‘Jamaat enforced a daylong hartal protesting the unfair arrest and remand of their leaders. We extend our support to the shutdown programme,’ he said.

The BNP leader further said, ‘It is our party’s latest decision. I told you yesterday (Wednesday) I didn’t get any direction from the party’s high commands about supporting the hartal. Now I have got a direction to extend our support to Jamaat’s today (Thursday) hartal.’

Rizvi said the Jamaat leaders were arrested to spread panic among people so that opposition parties cannot take any programme against the government.

Earlier, on Wednesday, BNP senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi said their party has no decision to support the hartal.

BNP leader said, ‘Our party secretary general issued a statement demanding the release of those arrested. Our party’s programme is limited to it in this regard, and we’ve nothing else out of it.’

Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami on Tuesday called the countrywide dawn-to-dusk hartal for Thursday to register its protest against the arrest and remand of its top leaders, including Ameer Maqbul Ahmad.

Detectives arrested Jamaat Ameer Maqbul Ahmad, its Nayeb-e-Ameer Mia Golam Parwar, also a former MP from Khulna-5 constituency, Secretary General Dr Shafiqur Rahman and six other party leaders from the city’s Uttara area on October 9.

A team of Detective Branch of police arrested them from a house at Road-3 of Sector-11 in Uttara while they were allegedly holding a clandestine meeting.