Four officials of the Lalbagh Network Operation and Customer Service under the Dhaka Power Distribution Company, DPDC, have been temporarily suspended for two power outages during the verdict declaration of the August 21 grenade attack on 10 October. The punished officers are superintendent engineer (AC) Shahjahan Ali Khan, executive engineer Ahsanuzzaman, assistant engineer, Sayeed Hossain and deputy assistant director, Md. Abul Hossain.
In this regard, a three-member investigation committee has been formed with DPDC chief engineer, Sarwar a Kainat, as head.
The committee has been asked to submit a report within three days. On Wednesday, there was a power outage as soon as the trial started.
Without power, speakers were inactive and journalists plus other people present at court could not hear the observations of the judge.
There wasn’t any power when the judge was reading out the punishment meted out to BNP’s acting chairman, Tarique Rahman, former state minister, Lutfozzaman Babar and others.
DPDC director (operations), Harun ur Rashid, said, “Power outages were possibly due to a fire in the distribution line; the first one lasted from 11:42 am till 12:3 pm but when line was restored, there was another outage due to short circuit.”
In such cases, the PWD generator within the prison should have started, but it didn’t, he added.