Staff Correspondent
Some 153 more Bangladesh Rifles personnel have been arrested in connection with the bloody February 25-26 rebellion at the border guards’ headquarters in Dhaka.
The Criminal Investigation Department, tasked with probing the case, produced the BDR soldiers in the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Court on Sunday showing them arrested in the case filed with Lalbagh police station relating to the mutiny.
After hearing, metropolitan magistrate Abdur Rahim sent the BDR members to jail. With them, more than 450 BDR personnel have so far been shown arrested in the case.
The court also remanded three other BDR members in police custody for three more days when they were produced in the court on completion of their previous five-day remand on Saturday. Another BDR member, who was also produced in the court on expiry of remand, was sent to jail on Sunday.
Meanwhile, the 20 BDR personnel, including a sweeper, who were remanded in custody for five days on Saturday, were being interrogated by the taskforce interrogation cell and the CID.
Four of them were being questioned at the CID headquarters while the rest at the TFI cell, sources close to the investigation teams said.
The investigators were now verifying the statements of the BDR soldiers who were earlier interrogated and those of the fresh ones.
Earlier, it was revealed that some members of the 44 Rifles Battalion and 36 Rifles Battalion had played a leading role in the February 25 rebellion.
It was also known that the members of the two battalions had played a leading role in the looting of firearms from the armouries and killing of the officers at the BDR headquarters on the day.
An official said that the number of firearms, missing from the armouries, was yet to be established and it would take some more time.
The sources said that a CID team also continued collecting evidence from the BDR headquarters.
Meanwhile, a new team of army, the 44 brigade of Comilla, took over at the BDR headquarters Sunday. The previous team of the army went back to Dhaka Cantonment.
The authorities continued allowing relatives to meet the BDR soldiers at the Pilkhana and relatives of 13 soldiers were allowed in through the gate 1 on Sunday.
The educational institutions inside the BDR headquarters are likely to reopen in the first week of April but the date has not yet been finalised, said an official at the information centre in front of the gate 4 at Jigatola.
Courtesy of NewAge
