Beauty parlor owner get bail for being pregnant

Mahbub Ahmed, metropolitan magistrate of Dhaka, passed an order on Saturday (January 13) granting her bail. Earlier in the evening, she was produced before the court.

A court in Dhaka has granted bail to Farnaz Alam, owner of Women's World, a beauty parlour at Dhanmondi in the capital who was arrested for installing closed-circuit cameras in different places including the changing room of her business entity.

Mahbub Ahmed, metropolitan magistrate of Dhaka, passed an order on Saturday (January 13) granting her bail. Earlier in the evening, she was produced before the court.

She was arrested by police from Dhaka Airport earlier in Saturday morning.

It is learnt that producing Farnaz before the court following her arrest, Md Khokon, sub-inspector of Dhanmondi Police Station and investigation officer of the case, pleaded to keep her in jail until the submission of an inquiry report in the case. Advocate Mustafizur Rahman, lawyer of the accused, also pleaded for bail of his client. After the hearing, the magistrate passed the order granting her bail.

Dhanmondi Police Station's general registration officer at the CMM court sub-inspector Md Mahfuzul Islam confirmed it. He said it was mentioned in police forwarding that the accused is a three months' pregnant. The counsel of the accused submitted relevant medical documents in support of it. So, the court granted the bail on a bond of Tk 5,000 until the submission of investigation report.

Farnaz Alam was arrested immediately after she returned to Dhaka from Dubai on Saturday (January 13) morning. Receiving information about her arrest from immigration police, the Dhanmondi police went to the airport and took her into their custody showing her arrested in the case. Earlier, three other accused -- Taslim Arif Ilyas, Emdadul Hasan and Jewel -- were arrested. The police offcial said they were also on bail.

On December 26 last, Dhanmondi Police Station's officer-in-charge (OC) Parvez Islam said police conducted a raid into Women's World parlour at night after receiving a written complaint from a woman. During the raid, police found eight CC cameras and eight DVR boxes in the changing room and other places.

At that time, Taslim Arif Ilyas, Emdadul Hasan and Jewel were arrested. They are the employees of that parlour. They claimed that the CC cameras were installed at the directive of the proprietor.

OC Parvez said the woman who made the complaint didn't want to file any case. Later, the police station itself filed the case. It is now being investigated whether the footages found in the CCTV cameras were used for any criminal of illegal purposes.

It may be mentioned that the High Court ordered removal of CCTV cameras from the service rooms of all beauty parlours of the country in 2011.