Armed groups won’t be tolerated, RAB chief warns KNF

He says the RAB operation running jointly with the army will not stop until the separatists choose the path of peace

M Khurshid Hossain, director general of the Rapid Action Battalion, has warned the Kuki-Chin National Front or KNF that armed groups will not be indulged in Bangladesh.

“We’re conducting the joint operation in the hills because we don’t want any armed group to operate in Bangabandhu’s independent Bangladesh,” he said in a media briefing at Bandarban Circuit House after visiting Ruma Upazila on Wednesday.

The KNF aka the Bawm Party recently attacked three banks in Ruma and Thanchi Upazilas of the district. They also abducted and then released a bank manager, dashing months of efforts to restore peace in the Chattogram Hill Tracts.

Security forces have captured several members of the KNF in the joint operation while police arrested dozens of members of the Bawm ethnic minority community following the bank robberies.

Khurshid said such incidents of bank robberies were “condemnable”.

Citing law-enforcing agencies’ efforts to rehabilitate surrendered extremists of the Sarbahara Party and pirates, he urged the KNF members to return to normal life.

“I think they want to live in peace,” he said. “We will welcome and do whatever necessary for the rehabilitation of those who took up arms and the wrong path under others’ influence but want to surrender after realising that they have done the wrong thing by going against the country.”