Much ado about nothing

After 21 hours of suspense, Bangladesh Army's Bomb Disposal and Destruction Unit of 17 Infantry Division confirmed that the bomb-like object found in Chowhatta area in Sylhet city was just a handheld electrical grinding machine.

Police detected the object tied to a motorcycle of a traffic sergeant of Sylhet Metropolitan Police (SMP) on Wednesday afternoon at around 6:30pm, and cordoned off the area since 7pm.

Later, a team of Rapid Action Battalion reached the spot and the disposal was further delayed till the team of Bangladesh Army reached the spot yesterday afternoon.

Lt Col Rahat of the division told journalists, "On request from Bangladesh Police to inspect and possibly diffuse the suspected object, we received instructions from Army Headquarters and reached the spot at 2pm today".

"The team consisting of bomb experts Lt Col Khaled, myself, Capt Noor, Capt Galib and others inspected the element, detached it and confirmed that it is a grinding machine. We then handed it over to police", he said.

Azbahar Ali Sheikh, deputy commissioner (North) of SMP, said, "We can think of two sides of such incident. One, maybe someone unintentionally put the machine there; the other possibility is that someone intentionally did it to create panic".

"We have already started our investigation regarding the matter, and will share more details in coming days", he said.