Home Minister: No criminals will be spared

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan has said that piracy will never bring peace to life; the government will not spare anyone and suppress criminals at any cost.

He said this in a ceremony organized at the elite hall of RAB-7 in Patenga, Chittagong city, where 50 pirates including a women pirate surrendered arms and ammunition in his hand on Thursday.

These pirates belonging to 12 pirate groups known to be the terror of Chakaria, Pekua, Maheshkhali and Qutubdia areas of Chittagong's Banshkhali and Cox's Bazar  surrendered along with 90 foreign and domestic weapons and 283 rounds of bullets/cartridges in the ceremony.

The home minister said: "These persons are sometimes tortured or oppressed and forced to engage in these activities. Local influential people also force them to do these activities.

“Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina assigned RAB as a task force in 2012 to protect the lives of marginalized people in Sundarbans. RAB's operation freed the Sundarbans from pirates,” he added.

RAB said that on November 1, 2018, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina declared the Sundarbans pirate-free. As a result of RAB's strict action in the Chittagong-Cox's Bazar region, a total of 77 pirates surrendered from the coastal areas of Chittagong and Cox's Bazar under the supervision of RAB-7 in 2018 and 2020.

342 notorious pirates and armed terrorists of Chittagong and Cox's Bazar region were arrested and 29,123 rounds of ammunition were recovered with a total of 2,603 different types of weapons both domestic and foreign.