The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

At least 22,000 people have been arrested so far by Joint Forces in the anti-crime crackdown launched across the country under emergency power rules.

A press release issued by the Police headquarters yesterday said 1,605people were arrested in the past 24 hours. The law enforcers also recovered 13 firearms, 24 crude bombs, 16 cocktails and 29 rounds of bullet during the period, it added.

In Jessore, Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), in separate drives, recovered a pistol and 1,014 bottles of Phensidyl fron Benapole on Monday morning.

Acting on a tip off, a team of RAB-6 raided a rice mill at Shyamolgachha on Jessore-Benapole road in the morning and seized the Indian cough syrup.

But, the elite force could not arrest anybody as the drug peddlers managed to flee the scene sensing their presence.

Meanwhile, another team of RAB recovered a pistol lying abandoned at Shikri Bottola in Benapole.

In Chandpur,Bangladesh Coast Guard members seized a trawler along with 2,200 sacks of urea and also arrested five people from Dakatia river on Tuesday.

Acting on a tip off, coast guard members seized the fertilizer from the trawler near ghat no 5 in the town when the urea was being smuggled to India from the district.

The team also arrested five staff of the trawler - Ripon, 16 and his brother Humayun Kabir, 35, Mainuddin Bepari, 65, Ismail Hossain, 26, and Liton, 16 -- and handed them over to Sadar Model Thana.