He made this announcement at a press conference at the DMP's media center on Monday (December 22) afternoon.
He said, from 10:30 pm last Friday (December 18) until the next morning, some miscreants took advantage of the protests from Shahbagh intersection to Karwan Bazar area and vandalized, set fire to and looted the offices of Prothom Alo and later the Daily Star newspaper. Although the police, army and other law enforcement agencies tried their best to control the situation, the police could not take immediate strict action due to the huge crowd and tense situation. The protesters even blocked the fire service vehicle.
After the incident, the authorities of Prothom Alo filed a case. The Daily Star's case is under process after determining the amount of damage. The police, DB, CTTC and other intelligence agencies are working to identify those involved in the attacks on the two institutions by analyzing CCTV and video footage.
Nazrul Islam said that so far, a total of 17 people have been arrested, including 13 police officers, 3 CTTC officers and 1 DB officer. In addition, 31 people involved in the violence have been identified by looking at CCTV footage.
The police have arrested 13 of them. Among those arrested, Md. Naeem (26) looted 150,000 taka. He used that money to buy a TV and a touch screen fridge. 50,000 taka, a TV and a fridge were recovered from him. The others are Akash Ahmed Sagar, Md. Abdul Ahad, Biplob, Nazrul Islam Minhaj, Md. Jahangir, Sohel Rana, Md. Hasan, Russell alias Shakil, Abdul Barek Sheikh alias Alamin, Rashedul Islam, Sohel Rana and Shafiqul Islam.
When asked about the political affiliation of the arrested, he said, "I don't want to look for political affiliation. These are miscreants. They are breaking the law. They have taken the law into their own hands. Their trial will be ensured under the prevailing law and judicial system of Bangladesh. No matter what party or opinion they belong to."
"Rather than looking for political involvement, our main goal is to bring the perpetrators under the law and ensure punishment through the conventional justice system," said the senior DMP official. "No matter what party or ideology the perpetrator belongs to, no one will be spared."
When asked about the motive behind the attacks on institutions like the Daily Star and Prothom Alo, he did not answer the question.
If there is such a connection, we are trying to identify them by looking at the video footage and are also making arrests. 17 people have been arrested, more will be arrested. Because there were many people there who were directly involved in this incident.
Protesting an incident is a different thing. Under the guise of this incident, I will go to an office and set it on fire, vandalize it, and commit vandalism - this is undesirable. Those who did this did it with bad intentions. We will definitely bring them to justice.
In response to a question about how capable the DMP is in preventing 'mob violence', the police officer said, "We are capable. We can always control all incidents - that's not the case. There are other issues behind the Karwan Bazar incident, the situation there. If we had gone into action there, there would have been shooting, two or four people would have died."
In return, they would have attacked the police force. We don't know what was in their minds. If two or four policemen had been killed that day, then you know that the police had just been through a huge trauma a year ago... We are bringing them to this stage, with elections ahead. If there are new casualties among these police, we will not be able to move forward with these police.
He said, "The reason we couldn't go into action there was that there was no loss of human life. I would say that this is an achievement for us in such a big incident. The matter was tackled without any casualty."
Some resources have been lost, some damage has been done - it may be possible to compensate for that. But when a human life is lost, it cannot be brought back for anything. That is why we did not go into action there.
So the police didn't take any action that day? In response to the question, he said, "We took action, as much as we felt was necessary, as much as our situation allowed. We could have taken action to the maximum - even shooting. But we tried to avoid that. Because the amount of manpower there, the public, was about four to five thousand. If I had taken action here with a force of 50-100 people, there was a possibility of casualties on both sides - my police and the public."
He said that the police take action 'depending on the place, time and circumstances' considering the situation. They cannot open fire everywhere whenever they want, nor should they do so.
Various activities took place there till 5 am. When asked when the police arrived, he said, the police arrived before the incident. Then the police tried to protect it. The police tried to stop it, but they couldn't. At one point, the police apologized and said, "You shouldn't do this." But the situation there was not enough for us to take action.
He also said that the conditions "did not exist" there, even before the shooting - tear gas shells and sound grenades.
When asked whether the police would fail in the same way in any such incident later, he said, "If we get advance information, we will definitely take action. Along with the police, RAB, BGB, and Army are also in the field, everyone is working."
When asked whether any action will be taken against some 'famous faces' who are being 'fuelled' from Facebook before such attacks, he said, "Four laws have been included in one case. I don't know if such a big case has been done before. Penal Code, Special Powers Act, Cyber Security Act, Anti-Terrorism Act - are all in the same case. We will take action on it."
Asked whether there is a threat or threat of further attacks on media outlets, the police official said, "We do not have any such information at this time. However, if we receive such information, we will definitely take necessary legal action to curb it."
In response to a question about the attacks in Chhayanaut and Udichi, he said, "A case has been filed at Dhanmondi Police Station for the Chhayanaut incident and at Shahbagh Police Station for the Udichi incident. I will brief you on that later."
