DHAKA, June 4: A leading Bangladeshi politician has been charged with holding a secret meeting in defiance of a ban by the country’s military-backed emergency government on political gatherings, an official said.

The general secretary of the former main opposition Awami League party, Abdul Jalil, was arrested last week and remanded for 30 days on Sunday on charges of trying to destabilise the government, police officer Nasimul Haq said. All political meetings and gatherings have been banned since a state of emergency was imposed in January.

Jalil was detained along with a string of other leading political figures who were picked up as part of the government’s ongoing anti-graft drive.Bangladesh authorities now have so many high-profile detainees that it is planning to set up a new jail to house them.

The government has told the prison department to create a new “sub-jail” to reduce pressure on existing jails which are struggling to accommodate an influx of VIP prisoners, said deputy inspector general (prison) Major Shamsul Haider Siddiqui.

“There are some 150 VIP prisoners in jails (nationwide). But in Dhaka’s central jail we can only accommodate some 20 such prisoners. We have made some makeshift arrangements to house more. But it’s at the expense of ordinary prisoners,” he said.

The prisoners include Tareque Rahman, son of country’s most recent former prime minister Khaleda Zia, and dozens of former ministers from both Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Awami League.

The detainees mostly face charges of corruption and special fast-track courts have been set up to try them. Thousands of lower-ranking figures have also been arrested.

Bangladesh’s interim government took power in January after the country’s president Iajuddin Ahmed, who was also head of the previous caretaker government, declared a state of emergency and cancelled polls.—AFP