Sudden attacks raise alarm

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday asked ministers to remain alert to the sudden rise in subversive activities and vandalism.

Hasina said this during an unscheduled discussion following the formal cabinet meeting when ministers expressed their concern over the marked increase in arson attacks and violence over the last three days across the country.

The ministers said they were also worried over the recovery of huge caches of explosives from Chittagong, and the killing of writer-blogger Avijit Roy, according to sources.

Some ministers during the discussion stressed the need for strengthening monitoring by intelligence agencies and launching joint operations to recover more explosives.

The PM said that Avijit Roy's killing was preplanned and related to the attack on eminent writer Humayun Azad, sources said.

Over the last three days, arson attacks in the capital saw a sudden rise with attackers disappearing soon after hurling bombs.

Vehicles were torched in this manner in front of Desh TV office at Mouchak on Saturday night, under the Gulishtan flyover on Sunday and at Hatirjheel yesterday.

All the attacks were carried out in merely three to five minutes, during which time some youths first blasted crude bombs to create panic, then vandalised vehicles with rods, set them on fire and disappeared very quickly.

According to a CCTV footage broadcast on Desh TV on Saturday, it was seen that around 20 people took position about an hour before conducting the attacks in front of the television channel's office.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), in a letter, directed the home ministry to conduct immediate joint operations in places where passenger and goods-laden vehicles came under arson attacks.

The letter asked the home ministry to take highest measures to nab the miscreants and take punitive action against them in a bid to make the situation normal, sources confirmed The Daily Star.

Moreover, the ministry yesterday directed deputy commissioners, superintendents of police and law enforcement agencies to work together under the instruction of divisional commissioners to stop attacks on vehicles, resist the anarchists and protect people's lives and public properties, ministry sources said.

The cabinet yesterday approved in principle the draft Battalion Ansar (Amendment) Act, 2015 with a proposal to incorporate the provision of "Force Retirement" in the Battalion Ansar Act, 1995 for any offence of the battalion members.

The cabinet meeting suggested reducing from nine years to six the existing time-limit of making permanent the service of an embodied Ansar as a battalion Ansar, said Cabinet Secretary Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan.

It also approved a proposal of the Power Division for creating a fund for rehabilitation and social development of the neighbourhoods surrounding the coal-fired power plants.

The cabinet secretary also said that the meeting approved a draft policy for the fund's operation by committees to be constituted with local people.

Civil Servant (Married with Foreign Nationals) Act-2015 and Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation Act, 2015 also got the cabinet nod at the meeting.