A retired Bangladesh Supreme Court judge was detained along the northeastern border with India in Sylhet while he was allegedly trying to flee the country, Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) said late Friday night.
The report came hours after the arrest of Awami League leader ASM Feroz from his residence.
The BGB headquarters told reporters through an SMS that they have detained former Supreme Court top appellate division judge Shamsuddin Chowdhury Manik as he was trying to enter India through the Kanaighat border in Sylhet.
The newspaper Prothom Alo quoted the camp in-charge as saying that Manik was kept at the BGB post until midnight.
Bangladesh descended into chaos when ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government collapsed and she fled to India on August 5 amid violent protests over reservation in government jobs, while the military stepped in to fill the power vacuum.
Earlier, more than 500 people were killed in anti-government protests since mid-July. Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus was sworn in as the chief advisor of the interim government on 8 August.
Since August 5, several leaders of the ousted regime, including senior ministers, have been arrested – several of them accused of murder.
The Bangladesh army had earlier said that hundreds of leaders of Hasina’s Awami League and others have been taken shelter in cantonments as their lives were in danger.
Former Law Minister Anisul Haque and former Prime Minister’s private sector affairs adviser Salman F Rahman were first arrested from the Sadarghat terminal area of Dhaka’s main river port when they were allegedly trying to leave Dhaka on a boat.
Several members of Hasina’s Cabinet, including former Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmud and former Social Welfare Minister Dipu Moni, several lawmakers and leaders of the Awami League and its allies, including leftist Workers Party chairman Rashid Khan Menon, as well as several recently dismissed military and civilian officials have been arrested.
They also included sacked Major General Ziaul Hasan, who served as head of the government’s telecommunications system, and Rear Admiral Mohammad Sohel, chairman of the Chittagong Port Authority, who was once a spokesman for the elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion.
A TV journalist couple, Farzana Roopa and her husband Shakeel Ahmed, were also arrested.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
