A Dhaka court yesterday summoned writer, poet Farhad Mazhar to appear before it on January 30 in connection with a case filed against him and his wife for “giving false statement” to police and court.

Metropolitan Magistrate of Dhaka Subrata Ghosh Shuvo passed the order after the case documents were produced before the court for the next course of action.

On December 28, Mahbubul Haque, inspector of the Detective Branch of police, lodged the case with Adabar Police Station against Mazhar and his wife Farida Akter.

The DB official, who also investigated the abduction case filed by Farhad's wife after he went missing on July 3, submitted a probe report before a Dhaka court on November 14, saying that Mazhar “staged the abduction” to get money from his family.

Farhad and his family had claimed that he was kidnapped by some people in the morning of July 3 after he went out of his Adabar home to buy some medicine.

Farhad was found in a bus in Jessore's Abhaynagar about 18 hours later.

Accepting the DB's probe findings, Metropolitan Magistrate of Dhaka Khurshid Alam on December 7 ordered police to sue Mazhar and his wife Farida for “staging the abduction”. 

Two days after the court's order, Farhad, a staunch critic of the government, held a conference at his home and insisted he was a victim of abduction and rejected the law enforcers' claims.

The evidence that police supplied to the media, including the footage of his movements in Khulna, sending money through a mobile banking channel, and him making a phone call to a woman, were all set up by the abductors, he claimed.

He did everything on his captors' instruction to save his life, he added.

Mazhar also claimed that the statement he submitted before a Dhaka court was scripted by police, and the claim was denied by law enforcers.