The Bangladesh police launched a crackdown on the perpetrators whose hands are bloody with the killings of religious and secular people belonging to minorities.
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Police said security forces overnight detained 3,115 more people, claiming 26 of them being militants, as part of the nationwide anti-militant drive aimed at stopping the killings, taking the total number of arrests to 11,648.
Police spokesman Kamrul Islam told reporters on Saturday that officers and paramilitary soldiers had fanned out across the country starting from Thursday night to raid suspected militant hideouts, and had apprehended some 1,600 people within 24 hours.
The 60-year-old extremist, identified as Garibullah Akand, was arrested in Muktagachha of northern Mymensingh area along with 26 suspected militants, police said.
The government denies that either group has a presence in Bangladesh and police say home-grown militants from Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen and Ansarullah Bangla Team are responsible.
Police made a decision to start the nationwide militant’s crackdown on Thursday five days after the brutal murder of Mahmuda Khanam Mitu, wife of Superintendent of Police (SP) Babul Akter in the port city Chittagong.
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said authorities would stop the killings of religious minorities and atheist campaigners in the country.
On Friday, a Hindu monastery worker was hacked to death in Pabna district.
Bangladeshi authorities have come under mounting worldwide pressure to end the attacks, which have left almost 50 people dead over the last three years.
Bangladesh is officially secular, but around 90 percent of its 160 million-strong population is Muslim.
Almost all the attacks have been claimed by transnational armed groups, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group and various affiliates of al-Qaeda.
However, the government has disputed these claims, with some members blaming opposition parties and local Islamist groups.
In the same month, a Hindu tailor was hacked to death in his shop and Bangladesh’s first gay magazine editor was brutally murdered along with a friend in his flat in Dhaka by Islamists.
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The special crackdown began with a primary objective of nabbing militants believed to be carrying out targeted covert killings one after another across the country. However, the government has dismissed such concerns, the Wall Street Journal reported. However, a report released by the Brussels-based nonprofit International Crisis Group said: “Heavy-handed measures are denting the government’s legitimacy and, by provoking violent counter-responses, benefiting violent party wings and extremist groups alike”.
