Authorities in Bangladesh have removed a police officer after tens of thousands of people defied the countrywide lockdown to attend the funeral of a Muslim cleric, triggering fears of rapid spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
The police headquarters in a statement on Saturday night cited officer in-charge of Sarail police station in Brahmanbaria, Shahadat Hossain’s failure to take proper steps to prevent the gathering as the reason behind the decision to remove him,
reports bdnews24.
On Saturday, thousands of people, without masks and in clear violations of social distancing, participated in the funeral prayers of Maulana Zubayer Ahmad Ansari, held at a madrasa in Bertola village under Sorail Upazila of Brahmanbaria district.
Police had agreed with the family of Ansari, that only 50 people would attend the funeral because of the risk of spreading the disease.
Organisers said some 100,000 attended the funeral. Aide to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Shah Ali Farhad, also said more than 100,000 were present.
The cleric had passed away at his home on Friday night.
Bangladesh imposed a nationwide lockdown on March 26 as coronavirus spread across the country of 168mn people.
The health department said the number of cases had risen by more than 300 on Saturday to about 2,200, while nine more deaths in one day took the toll
to 84.
Authorities have conducted few tests and experts say the number of cases is higher than officially recognised.
New rules ban more than five people taking part in prayers in the country’s 300,000 mosques.
The prime minister has called on Bangladeshis to pray at home when the Ramadan festival starts this month. But a group of influential clerics has called on Muslims to turn out in their masses for daily prayers.
Last month at least 25,000 people attended a Muslim prayer meeting in a field in the southern city of Raipur to chant “healing verses” to rid the country of the deadly virus.
The gathering was so large that the authorities did not bother to stop it, according to media reports.
Before his removal, the officer in-charge said that many people from as far as Dhaka came to join the funeral prayers.
“We never thought there would be this many people. There was nothing we could do once the crowd began streaming in,” he was quoted as saying by bdnews24.
Volunteers spray disinfectant on a rickshaw along a road during a government-imposed shut-down as a preventive measure against the Covid-19 coronavirus, in Dhaka yesterday.
