Ei Samay interview fabricated, Fakhrul didn’t give it: BNP

An interview involving Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, published by the Kolkata-based Bengali daily Ei Samay, is completely false and fabricated, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) said in a statement on Wednesday.

The statement said the newspaper carried a report titled “Fakhrul wants Awami League and Jatiya Party in the election,” claiming that the BNP Secretary General had given an interview to the paper.

In the statement, undersigned by the party’s Assistant Office Secretary Advocate Taiful Islam Tipu, the BNP said, “Recently, the BNP Secretary General has not given any interview to any foreign media. The imaginary interview has been published deliberately to tarnish the image of the party and its Secretary General. The fabricated remarks are aimed at creating doubt and confusion in the minds of the people of Bangladesh.”

The BNP further clarified that there is no scope for the people of the country or the party’s leaders and activists to be misled by the false statements published in the foreign Bengali media outlet.

Notably, the Kolkata-based daily on Monday carried an interview headlined, “Why is India putting BNP and Jamaat in the same bracket? asks Mirza,” claiming that its correspondent had recently interviewed Fakhrul in Dhaka. However, the BNP in its statement claimed that the daily actually published the interview under the headline “Fakhrul wants Awami League and Jatiya Party in the election.”