Police searching phones of passengers in Savar for suspicious info

Police have set up multiple checkpoints along the Dhaka-Aricha Highway. They are actively stopping vehicles such as buses, cars, and motorcycles bound for Dhaka, and conducting thorough searches of both passengers and their mobile phones to find suspicious information. Some are being held back while others are being allowed to head into Dhaka.

Dhaka district’s additional Police Super (Crime and Ops and Traffic North division) Abdullahil Kafi told Prothom Alo, two parties are holding programmes in Dhaka on Friday. Police have heightened the checking to prevent any untoward incidents. They are stopping vehicles and questioning individuals who appear suspicious. If the responses provided by the individuals are deemed satisfactory, they are permitted to proceed.

As of now, there have been no arrests made, he added.

Members of law enforcement agencies are conducting searches at the Nabinagar, Savar, Hemayetpur, Aminbazar areas of the Dhaka-Aricha Highway. Moreover, searches are also being conducted in Savar’s Birulia, Ashulia’s Dhour, Zirani, Zirabo and Baipail.

In the morning, members of the law enforcement agencies were seen conducting searches at a check point set up in front of the Aminbazar 20 bed Hospital– one of the busiest entry points to the city. Police officials quizzed the passengers heading to Dhaka. The Police checked the mobile phones of many passengers, checked their bags and inquired about their purpose behind traveling to Dhaka.

If the police didn’t find the answers satisfactory, the passengers were taken to the premises of the Aminbazar 20 bed Hospital. At 6:30am, nearly 50 people from there were taken to someplace else on a prison van. Then at 8:40, another 20-25 people were taken to some other location from the hospital premises on a prison van.

Between 6:00 am to 8:30 am, the police moved around 50 people from Savar’s Aminbazar on prison vans. While being taken to some other location, some people inside the van were overheard saying, "They apprehended us because of our allegiance to the party."

At 8:00am at a check point in Aminbazar, a police official was seen checking the phone of a person named Iqbal Hossain from Savar. After a while, he was allowed to go.

Around the same time, a person named Md Rasel was going to Mirpur from Dhamrai. A police official searched his phone for suspicious content. Rasel told Prothom Alo, “The police questioned me for a while and subsequently let me go.”

Savar BNP’s general secretary alleged that in Savar, the police are arresting every BNP leaders and activists. At Aminbazar, the leaders and activists were being arrested from buses, he added.