Late night RAB raid on Dhaka house finds Rizvi

Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, the BNP spokesperson who issued a statement Friday afternoon calling for a 72-hour shutdown throughout Bangladesh, has been arrested at a house in Dhaka, officials said.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 30 Jan 2015, 09:28 PM
Updated : 30 Jan 2015, 11:04 PM

A RAB officer, who declined to be quoted for this news story, said Rizvi had been picked up from a house in Baridhara at 2:45am Saturday.

The alleged statement, purportedly signed by Rizvi, was made available to press at around 5pm Friday.

Rizvi, who had been releasing statements from a hideout for the past few weeks, was taken into custody roughly 10 hours after the latest statement.

The 72-hour shutdown that he allegedly called begins a day before hundreds of thousand were to sit their crucial school final examinations throughout Bangladesh.

Later another senior RAB officer, Mufti Mahmood Hasan, RAB’s media wing director, confirmed the arrest to bdnews24.com Chief Crime Correspondent Liton Haider.

“He was found hiding inside a house on Park Road,” Hasan said.

“It was House 98,” he said. Details about the owner or the other occupants of the house in the capital’s diplomatic district were not immediately available.

Jatiya Party chief HM Ershad lives on the same street in Baridhara.

Rizvi’s alleged shutdown statement -- that added general strike to the existing blockade of roads, rail and waterways -- came in defiance of appeals from the education minister and others to withdraw the blockade to spare the teenage students.