Security forces in a joint operation against the ethnic armed group Kuki-Chin National Front and its sympathisers between Sunday night and Monday arrested 54 people, including 18 women in Bandarban.
The arrest was made in connection with attacks on banks and police installations that saw cash and arms looted between April 2 and 4 in Bandarban鈥檚 Ruma and Thanchi upazillas.
Hossain Md Raihan Kazemy, additional superintendent of police (administration) in Bandarban, confirmed the number of arrests, saying that they would be produced before the chief judicial magistrate court on Tuesday in connection with eight cases filed over the attacks.
Kazemy said that a joint operation carried out by the Bangladesh Army and other law-enforcing agencies arrested 49 KNF supporters鈥�31 male and 18 female鈥攁nd police arrested five, including a driver who drove KNF armed people in Thanchi on April 3.
He said that two others, including one cashier of Sonali Bank鈥檚 Ruma branch, were being interrogated for their role during recent incidents.
Inter-Services Public Relations directorate, meanwhile, stated on Monday that they seized seven locally made guns, 20 bullets, a laptop, a set of uniforms, and a pair of boots in Bethelpara of Ruma upazila in the hilly district.
Army鈥檚 Bandarban region commander Brigadier General Mehedi Hassan told the press that a joint operation, led by Ruma zone commander Lieutenant Colonel KM Arafat Amin, led a team to seize those weapons from a KNF 鈥榟ideout鈥�.
On Sunday, the joint force arrested six others, including a woman.
Of them, the Rapid Action Battalion arrested one of the cousin brothers of ethnic armed group Kuki-Chin National Front chief, Nathan Bawm, in an overnight raid on his house in Sualok union of the hilly district of Bandarban on Saturday.
A day after the visit of home minister Asaduzzaman Khan and senior officials, army chief General SM Shafiuddin Ahmed visited the Bandarban region on Sunday and said that they had no prior intelligence about the possible attack on those banks.
He met the officers and rankers and told the press that his force, along with Border Guard Bangladesh, police, RAB, and others, would conduct coordinated operations.
Some would be clandestine, some would be combined, and if necessary, Bangladeshi forces would confront the KNF, he said.
Meanwhile, KNF said on one of their unverified Facebook pages that a national gymnast with an ethnic bawm identity was arrested in connection with one of the cases related to the Sonali Bank robbery.
On another unverified Facebook page, the KNF announced restrictions on all kinds of vehicular movements starting Monday evening.
On their page, KNF claimed that the joint force was 鈥榙ropping heavy bombs,鈥� which the police dismissed as 鈥榬umour鈥�.
