At least 217 people were arrested in 167 cases for possessing illegal firearms in joint drives conducted between September 4 and October 31.
Officials at the Police Headquarters said that they also recovered 369 firearms in the drives jointly conducted by the police, army, Rapid Action Battalion, Border Guard Bangladesh, and Ansar during this period.聽
Among the recovered firearms were those looted from the police stations across the country, mostly in the aftermath of August 5 when Sheikh Hasina resigned as prime minister and fled to India amid a student-led mass uprising.聽
On September 7, the home ministry said that total 5,818 weapons of different types were looted, and 3,993 were recovered till September 5.
The police had yet to recover 1,885 weapons and 2,94,405 rounds of ammunition, the police headquarters added.聽
Asked about the reasons for recovering only a small portion of the looted arms and ammunition in these two months, police headquarters assistant inspector general for media and public relations Enamul Haque Sagar said that the drive was still going on.聽
鈥楯oint drives to recover illegal firearms will continue. We have arrested 217 people for possessing illegal firearms, including the looted ones,鈥� he added.
Between Sunday and Thursday, the police, army and the Rapid Action Battalion conducted joint drives in Mohammadpur area and arrested 129 people for their alleged involvement in criminal activities of mugging, robbery and extortions.
Assistant inspector general of police Enamul said that they were not able to confirm whether the Mohammadpur drive was part of the ongoing joint drive to recover illegal firearms.聽
Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesperson Md Talebur Rahman also did not confirm whether it was a special drive, or part of the ongoing joint drive for illegal firearms recovery.
Some DMP officials, however, said that the Mohammadpur drive was a separate drive.聽
Mohamamdpur police officer-in-charge Ali Iftekhar Hasan said that they had mistakenly detained two students during the joint drives on Sunday and later released them to their parents after scrutiny.
鈥楽ome mistakes are likely to take place during a big operation. We, however, released the innocent ones later,鈥� he added.
Police assistant inspector general Emanul said that they had produced all the arrested to court as per the legal procedure.
鈥業f we find someone to be picked up mistakenly, we release the suspect after scrutiny,鈥� he added.
At least 44 police personnel were killed, mostly after the fall of Hasina.
