Azizul Haq Islamabadi, the organizing secretary of the inactive committee, told Prothom Alo, “My life has become hell with court appearances for cases in Dhaka and Chattogram. For an incident (clash) that took place on March 26, 2021, 63 cases have been registered in Brahmanbaria, 13 in Hathazari and nine in Dhaka. Although there was no Hefazat program that day. We are living in a strange country.”
Currently, there are 30 cases against Azizul- 17 of them are in different police stations of Dhaka and 13 in Chattogram. He has got bail in recent cases.
Hifazat-e-Islam is a non-political Qaumi Madrassa organization, whose founder was Chief Shah Ahmad Shafi. After his death on 18 September 2020, a new Central Committee consisting of 151 members was announced on 15 November that year following a national convention amid opposition from a section of the organisation.
Ahmad Shafi’s son Anas Madani or any of his followers were not included in the new committee headed by Junaid Babunagri. Babunagari later added 50 more people to the committee, which increased the number of members of the committee.
On 25 April 2021, a committee was declared void under special circumstances. But the current leadership of Hefazat has decided to include the members of that committee in the current committee.
The central committee of the organization took this decision on August 5 in a meeting at Khilgaon in the capital. To implement this decision, a 12-member sub-committee was formed under the leadership of Maulana Sajidur Rahman. However, the sub-committee is yet to meet to reinstate the old members.
