The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party alleged on Saturday that police continued targeted raids at the houses of party leaders and activists and harassed family members if they were unable to arrest their targets.

In many incidents, police allegedly carried out vandalism at the houses of opposition leaders and activists, alleged the party’s senior joint secretary general, Ruhul Kabir Rizvi.

The party’s organising secretary, Syed Emran Saleh Prince, was the latest senior party leader to be detained by the Detective Branch of police, according to BNP’s media cell.

The opposition party’s media wing claimed that Price was detained at his sister’s house in the capital’s Badda area.The police did not confirm his arrest immediately.

In many instances, police were making arrests in cases filed months earlier, the BNP said.In a video statement, Rizvi likened the situation to the one that prevailed in Bangladesh’s War of Independence in 1971.He said that police had been arresting the father, son, or brother of the BNP leaders and activists if they did not find their targeted BNP leader or activist.

In one incident in Kishoreganj, police arrested Shahidul Islam Anik and Maksudul Islam Abir, twin sons of Kishoreganj municipality unit BNP president Aminul Islam Ashfaque, after they did not find him during a raid on his house.Ashfaque’s wife, Nazma Islam, said that Abir is an undergraduate-level student and Anik is an HSC student.

She said that police raided their house on Wednesday night. Police arrested Abir and Anik because their father was not available at the house, Nazma told local journalists.

Kishoreganj district BNP leaders alleged that police had been carrying out such raids, harassing family members, and even arresting them after not finding the party leaders and activists.Contacted, Kishoreganj Sadar police station officer-in-charge Mohammad Daud said that the two were arrested and sent to jail as they were accused in a violence case.Police did not share the updated numbers of arrests and cases filed against opposition leaders and activists, despite several requests.

The police authorities also did not reply to the allegation of police harassment and arrests of BNP leaders and activists’ family members.

In a statement on Saturday evening, BNP senior leader Rizvi said that another 176 leaders and activists of the party were arrested across the country in the past 24 hours.

He said that over 5,000 leaders and activists of the party were arrested in the past nine days in connection with the foiled October 28 grand rally, and 113 cases were filed.

The BNP central office at Naya Paltan has been kept locked for seven days, with the police cordoning it off following the violence on October 28.

The Rapid Action Battalion said that on Saturday it had arrested 23 opposition leaders and activists accused in violence cases in Dhaka and other districts.

In Natore, a union-level leader of Juba Dal was tortured and hacked after he was abducted by people in plainclothes claiming to be members of the Detective Branch of the police in Lalpur upazila on Friday night.

Injured Masud Rana, general secretary of Bilmaria union Juba Dal, was rescued later on and is now undergoing treatment at Rajshahi Medical College Hospital.

Family members said that some people posing as members of DB picked up Masud on the way home from his shop at a local market around 10:30pm.

The miscreants hacked him with sharp weapons and left him on the bank of a canal near Lalpur Mohila College, assuming he was dead, they said.

Later, locals rescued and rushed him to Lalpur Upazila Health Complex before he was transferred to Rajshahi Medical College Hospital in critical condition.

Lalpur police station officer in charge, Ujjal Hossain, said that they were looking into the matter.

correspondent in Rajshahi reported that police on Friday night arrested a female physician in Rajshahi in a case filed in May over violence and funding Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami.

Arrested Fatema Siddiqua is a former associate professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Islami Bank Medical College and Hospital in Rajshahi and the owner of Motherland Infertility Centre and Hospital.

Ismail Hossain, officer in charge of Shah Makhdum police station, told that they had arrested Fatema on the charge of inciting sabotage as she financed Jamaat.

A total of 15 new cases have been filed against nearly 2,000 BNP leaders and activists, and more than 150 have been arrested in Khulna since the party’s grand rally in Dhaka on October 28, reports United News of Bangladesh.

Mizanur Rahman Milton, a member of the party’s Khulna media cell, alleged that police were arresting BNP leaders and activists indiscriminately and sending them to court as unnamed accused in different cases filed under different police stations.

 correspondent in Jashore reported that police filed a case against Aninda Islam Amit, acting organising secretary of BNP, and 34 others with Kotwali police station in connection with the burning of a BRTC bus at an old bus terminal near Manihar Cinema Hall.

Criminals set the standing bus on fire at about 10:45 p.m. on Thursday, and the case was filed with Kotwali police station on Friday night.

According to BNP sources, 51 leaders and activists were held in Gaibandha on Friday night and Saturday in fresh raids, 19 in Jhenaidah, over a dozen in Joypurhat, 9 in Dhaka district, and 5 in Khagrachari.