Bangabhaban staffer held over Shafique’s account hack
Staff Reporter :
A staff member of Bangabhaban has been taken into custody in connection with the hacking of the verified X (formerly Twitter) account of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Dr Shafiqur Rahman.
The detainee has been identified as Mohammad Sarwar-e-Alam, an assistant programmer working at the President’s Office. He was detained by the Detective Branch (DB) of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) around midnight on Tuesday.
DMP Additional Police Commissioner (DB) Shafiqul Islam confirmed the matter, stating that Sarwar-e-Alam was brought to the DB office for interrogation. He added that further legal steps would be determined based on the outcome of the questioning.
Earlier, Jamaat-e-Islami had demanded that the authorities submit an investigation report and provide updates within 24 hours regarding the hacking incident.
On Tuesday afternoon, a Jamaat delegation led by Sirajul Islam, a member of the party’s central election management committee, visited Bangabhaban and submitted a written complaint.
According to Jamaat, Dr Shafiqur Rahman’s X account was compromised after 4:00pm on January 31, with an objectionable post appearing at 4:37pm.
The party’s central IT team regained full control of the account by changing the password at 5:09pm, followed by an emergency public statement at 5:22pm notifying users of the breach.
A general diary (GD) was filed with the police later that night, and the following morning Jamaat briefed the media at a press conference, presenting details of the incident along with findings on the suspected source and method used in the hacking.
Jamaat further claimed that its internal probe revealed phishing emails had been sent to several official email addresses, including a central party account, which enabled unauthorized access to a device.
The phishing email was allegedly sent from a government email address associated with Bangabhaban.
The party said it approached Bangabhaban directly to lodge its complaint after receiving no response from the authorities in the immediate aftermath of the incident.