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The government will not use the Rapid Action Battalion with political motive, the state minister for home, Lutfozzaman Babar, told the Jatiya Sangsad on Thursday.
   ‘RAB was never used nor will be used for political purpose,’ he said during the question-answer session of the House.
   In reply to a question by Jatiya Party lawmaker Hafiz Uddin Ahmed, the minister said the government is working to find out the mysteries behind the bomb hoax. ‘We hope to get a good result.’
   Babar said RAB recovered a total of 662 illegal firearms till January 31 since the formation of the elite anticrime force, and two other anticrime forces — Cobra and Cheetah— 100 and 39 illegal firearms respectively since they started functioning.
   The minister told the House that the government has no plan to extend the activities of RAB, Cobra, and Cheetah throughout the country.
   He, however, assured that if situations demand, these forces would go anywhere in the country to rein in serious crime.
   Babar said a number of foreigners have been working in the country without permit. But the minister did not give any figure regarding the foreigners.
   He said the government has formed a nine-member committee to make way for detecting such foreigners. ‘The committee has already submitted a report and the recommendations are under consideration.’
   Babar said the government has a plan to provide the Bangladeshi citizens with National Identity Card.
   He informed the House that some 20,197 Rohingya refugees came from Myanmar still remain in the country.
   The foreign minister, M Morshed Khan, said 95 percent of Rohingya refugees so far returned to their homeland. He mentioned that a secretary level committee has been working to expedite the repatriation of the remaining refugees.
   The next census of the country will be held in 2011, the state minister for finance and planning, Anwarul Kabir Talukdar, told the House.

Family members of the slain Shah AMS Kibria demanded Thursday that those who had commented blaming others’ involvement in the Habiganj carnage should be quizzed by foreign investigators.
   Evading a question whether the leader of the opposition in parliament, Sheikh Hasina, who had also made such allegations, Reza Kibria, son of the slain Awami League leader, said, ‘All the persons who commented regarding the killing of my father should be quizzed as I think they may have information on the matter.’
   Reza, however, said that he had prepared a list of those who might be interrogated by the foreign investigators and the name of Sheikh Hasina was not included in it.
    ‘We are making a list of those who should be quizzed. Four names have already been included. And they should be quizzed to identify the mastermind of the grenade attack,’ he told a press conference at his Dhanmondi residence after Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, the minister for health and family welfare, linked the Awami League itself to the killing.
   Besides Mosharraf, the Kibria family wanted the finance minister, M Saifur Rahman, the LGRD and coperatives minister, Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, and the industries minister, Matiur Rahman Nizami, to be interrogated by the investigators as all those four persons hinted at the possible links with the homicide.
   Reza, earlier, said the ministers stated different reasons to the press for the grenade attack.
   Newspapers quoted Nizami as saying that a certain political party killed Shah AMS Kibria to foil the SAARC summit, Saifur Rahman called the killing a ‘personal matter, Mannan Bhuiyan made a statement in public on Kibria’s killing in which he accused the Awami League of carrying out the attack and Mosharraf blamed the Awami League for being unable to arrange proper medical treatment for Shah AMS Kibria.
   The Awami League president, Sheikh Hasina, repeatedly accused the ruling BNP-Jamaat government of killing Shah AMS Kibria.
   Hasina at an exchange-of-opinion meeting at her party’s Dhanmondi office with the presidents and secretaries of different thana units in Dhaka City on Wednesday said, ‘An identified extreme fundamentalist group is involved in grenade attacks.’

The government should take steps to reclaim khas land grabbed by the influential persons or bodies across the country and distribute the land among landless marginalised farmers, speakers told a discussion meeting on Thursday.
   The Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust organised the discussion on ‘reviewing land laws relating to khas land distribution’ at the CIRDAP auditorium.
   The participants came up with several suggestions, including amendment to land
   distribution laws, reduction of ceiling of land from 60 bighas to 35 bighas, modernisation of the land survey system, computerisation of the land
   registration and documentation system, and identification of khas land.
   Professor Abul Barakat and the trust staff lawyer Sheikh Salauddin presented two keynote papers on ‘share of the poor in khas land and water bodies in Bangladesh: problems and recommendations’ and ‘land rights and poverty alleviation.’ Nijera Kari director, Khushi Kabir, moderated the function.
   Salauddin said the landless poor people had increased to 68.8 percent in 2001 from 14.3 per cent in 1947. Eighty per cent of the land is owned by only 10 per cent of the total population, mostly by bureaucrats, politicians, social elite and influential, he said.
   Referring a government data, Barakat said 33 lakh acres of land was identified as khas of which 8 lakh was agrarian, 17 lakh non-agrarian, and 8 lakh of land was covered by water bodies.
   He termed the distribution of total 833,308 acres of khas land among the landless poor by the government ‘completely false’ and claimed that the rich and influential people had occupied 88 per cent of the land.
   Professor Muzaffer Ahmad stressed on the distribution of khas land among the landless marginalised farmers for higher productivity than that of the farmers who had vast lands.

Eleven persons were convicted and sentenced to death by a district court in Comilla Thursday in the sensational couple murder case at village Sonarchar under Meghna upazila three years back.
   The convicts are: Ujjal Miah, Enamul Haq Munna, Yunus Miah, Maharaj Miah, Mohan Miah, Siraj Miah, Rab Miah, Ali Hossain, Nurul Islam, Abdul Halim and Senu Miah. All of them are from Sonarchar.
   Only two of the convicted accused, Mohan Miah and Senu Miah, were on the dock when the third additional district and sessions judge, SM Mojibur Rahman, pronounced the verdict in a crowded courtroom after examining 11 witnesses. The remaining nine accused were tried in absentia.

The opposition Awami League lawmakers on Thursday threatened to go for a no-confidence motion against the speaker in the next parliament session for what they said his negligence in duty.
   ‘Although the countrymen and the world leaders heard the news of grenade attack on former finance minister Shah AMS Kibria shortly after the incident on January 27, the speaker heard it on the next day,’ said Suranjit Sengupta, the parliamentary affairs advisor to the opposition leader, Sheikh Hasina.
   ‘It is a matter of great shame. We are planning to take a no-confidence motion against the speaker in the next parliament session,’ he told a mourning rally on Kibria at the Laldighi Maidan in the city.
   Abdur Razzak said the phantoms of Pakistan, who are in now in power, are carrying out killings in a planned way to destroy the country.
   Tofail Ahmed said that the attacks on AL rallies are being carried with the grenades smuggled from Chittagong. ‘No main culprits are being arrested as the grenade attacks are carried out with the direction of the government.’

The finance and planning minister, M Saifur Rahman told the Jatiya Sangsad on Thursday that according to the 2001 census of the country, the population was 13,00,29,749.
   Replying to a question from Helaluzzaman Talukdar Lalu, he said Dhaka district topped in the district-wise population, which stands at 92,56,148 and the lowest was 3,14,292 in the Bandarban district.
   He said the population census was being carried out every ten-year.