A Bangladeshi singer with a large online audience was brought to the police station in the early hours of today where he was told to stop his painful renditions of classical songs, which caused uproar on social media.
“Hero Alom”, as he calls himself, has almost two million followers on Facebook and about 1.5 million on YouTubewhere he has been uploading the eccentricities for many years video clip of his songs.
One of them is the video where he performs “Arabian Song”, in which he appears in the traditional Arabic clothing on a sand dune with a background of camels and which he has collected 17 million views.
However, Alom has also attracted a lot of criticism mainly for his failed renditions of two beloved classic national songs – by Nobel Prize-winning Hindu poet Rabindranath Tagore and Bangladesh’s national poet, Kazi Nazrul Islam.
Yesterday the Alom he told AFP that last week he “suffered mental torture” by the police who asked him to stop performing classical songs, told him that he is too ugly to be a singer and that he will have to sign an “apology contract”.
“The police took me at 6am and held me for eight hours. (The police) asked me why I was singing Rabindra and Nazrul songs,” he says.
THE chief of police of Dhaka, Haroon ur Rashid, told reporters that Alom had apologized for singing popular songs and for wearing police uniform without having obtained permission.
“We received many complaints against him. It completely changed it traditional style of the songs…He assured us that he will not do it again,” said Haroon.
Farooq Hussain, Dhaka’s police commissioner, dismissed claims by 37-year-old Alom that he was pressured to change his name. “He is only making these allegations so they can go viral on social media,” he told AFP.
As reported by the Athens News Agency, after his ordeal Alom released a new video showing him behind prison bars in a prisoner’s uniform saying he was going to be hanged.
His treatment by police sparked outrage on social media with commentators and activists calling it an attack on civil rights – even if Alom is a bad singer.
“I’m not a fan of them songs of you or your interpretation. But if there is an attempt to suppress your voice, I am against it,” wrote journalist Aditya Arafat.
“Do not be sorry. You are a hero, no matter what others say you are one true heroSadiya Hatun Rakhi wrote on Alom’s Facebook page.
Alom says he has appeared in several films and also ran as an independent candidate in his country’s 2018 parliamentary elections where he garnered 638 votes.
He started using the nickname “hero” when he became popular in his hometown of Bogra, 150 kilometers north of Dhaka, he told AFP from his studio in Dhaka.
“I felt like a hero. And so I adopted the nickname ‘Hero Alom’. I’m not going to change it. At the moment it seems you can’t even sing freely on Bangladesh“, says .
Source: News Beast

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