A Dhaka court on Saturday remanded a sacked Saudi embassy staff for six days in police custody in a case filed for threatening a diplomat with death recently by sending text message.
The Chief Metropolitan Magistrate court’s magistrate, Moniruzzaman, remanded the sacked translator of embassy’s religious affairs section, ANM Abdur Rashid, 57, in the police custody after the investigators produced him with a 10-day remand prayer, the court officials told New Age.
The Detective Branch of police team, led by additional deputy commissioner Mohammad Solaiman, on Friday arrested Abdur Rashid at Banasree in the capital’s Rampura, the detectives said on Saturday in a press briefing.
Abdur Rashid, however, said he had sent an SMS to threaten the religious attaché, Ali Saleh Bamaka, with death following a recent move in which he had lost his job at the embassy.
Two other texts also were sent to the Saudi ambassador, Abdullah Bin Naser Al-Busairi, and his deputy Sami Jamil Al Hindi informing about the fate of the religious attaché, said Abdur Rashid while talking to New Age.
The Gulshan police subinspector, Sheikh Shohel Rana, told New Age that Abdur Rashid on June 20 sent the text using a Robi number to Ali Saleh Bamaka, while he was on leave in Saudi Arab.
The embassy’s legal adviser Jasim Uddin Sarkar filed a general diary with the Gulshan police on June 27 and police started investigation, said Shohel, who deals with diplomatic affairs in Gulshan area.   
Abdur Rashid told New Age that he had a misunderstanding with Ali Saleh Bamaka over appointing some religious teachers in the religious section.
‘I was finally sacked on May 21 following the issue,’ he said, adding, ‘the decision angered me.’
The incident took place when the investigators are yet track the killers of another Saudi diplomat in Dhaka even four months after the killing.
None of the investigating agencies could reveal the motive of the killing after they had quizzed a number of people since the killing of the head of citizen affairs at Saudi embassy in Dhaka, Khalaf bin Mohammed Salem al-Ali, 45.
Khalaf al-Ali died on March 6 at a city hospital hours after he was found bullet injured some yards off his rented apartment in Gulshan where he had been living alone for last two years.
When asked, Abdur Rashid, however, claimed that he did not know the slain diplomat.
The DB’s additional deputy commissioner Solaiman said they would interrogate Abdur Rashid about the killing of Khalaf.