From Anisur Rahman
Dhaka: More than 5,300 criminal suspects, including 85 militants, have been arrested in Bangladesh as part of an intensified crackdown on Islamists to halt a wave of brutal attacks on minorities and secular writers, police said today.

As many as 2,128 people have been arrested on the second day of a nationwide anti-terror crackdown, police said, adding 48 of them belonged to various militant outfits.

The other arrested militant suspects belonged to banned outfits like Jagrota Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) or Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT).

Altogether 5,320 people have been arrested, including 85 militants, since Friday morning, when the drive kicked off, police said. Yesterday, 3,192 people had been arrested.

“The rest of the arrested 5,320 persons were mostly fugitives who are wanted in different criminal cases including narcotics charges,” a police spokesman said.

Bangladesh launched the drive after a high-level meeting held by Inspector General AKM Shahidul Hoque on Thursday. The anti-militant drive involved the paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh and the elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion.

Bangladesh has been witnessing a string of brutal attacks by Islamists. Islamic State and al-Qaeda in the Indian Peninsula have claimed some of the attacks but the government denies the presence of these groups in Bangladesh.

The government attributes the murders to homegrown militant outfits like JMB, saying key-opposition BNP and its fundamentalist ally Jamaat-e-Islami were patronising the attacks under an orchestrated plot against the government.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Friday told a meeting of her ruling Awami League party that police would stamp out the violence and vowed to catch “each and every killer”.

The attacks since last year, which has left more than 30 people dead, has put Bangladesh under a global spotlight for failing to prevent such attacks.

On Friday, a 60-year-old Hindu ashram worker was hacked to death by IS jihadists, days after another priest was killed by the same terrorist group in the Muslim-majority nation.

In February, militants stabbed to death a Hindu priest at a temple and shot and wounded a devotee who went to his aid.

In April, a liberal professor was brutally hacked to death in Rajshahi city. The same month, a Hindu tailor was hacked to death and Bangladesh’s first gay magazine editor was murdered in his Dhaka flat by Islamists.

PTI