In the Farmgate neighborhood of the city, Nasir Uddin operates a pickup truck. His wife Babli and their four young children were waiting in front of the DB office on Minto Road in the city on Tuesday afternoon. Next to her, sobbing was Nasir’s mother, Rumela Akhtar.
They claimed that Nasir was taken from the house by a few individuals posing as DB members. They had come to look for Nasir.
Not only does Nasir have a daily gathering of relatives in the capital in front of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s DB office, but also numerous police stations and courts.
Tuesday from 12:00 pm to 3:00 pm, Prothom Alo conducted interviews with nine of these family members in front of the DB office. The day before, four more of these families were seen standing in line outside the DB office gate. The majority of them are the families of traders, students, and day laborers.
Asaduzzaman Khan, the home minister, clarified to the media on Tuesday that no innocent person is being detained.
In answer to inquiries from reporters at the secretariat, he went on to say that people who have been identified using intelligence data, video footage, and other proof are being taken into custody. Those who are mistakenly jailed but later prove to be innocent after consulting with the police station are freed.
Thus, he claimed, there is no mass arrest.
According to Dhaka court sources, 2,891 persons had been detained as of Tuesday in 270 instances related to the quota reform movement in Dhaka.
According to a Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) estimate, as of Monday, 2,630 persons had been detained and brought before courts in 243 cases pertaining to the capital’s quota reform campaign. It was discovered that 2,284 of them, or 86.84 percent of all arrests, had no political affiliation. In other words, they don’t belong to any political party.
