Members of the Tourist Police have arrested another three people over the alleged gang rape of a female tourist in a hotel in Cox’s Bazar.
Rezaul Karim, 30, Mehedi Hasan, 25, and Mamunur Rashid, 28, were arrested late on Saturday, Deputy Inspector General Moslem Uddin of the Tourist Police said during a media call on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Ariful Islam Ashiq, the prime suspect, was still on the run, he added.
Ashiq, who got released from jail four months ago, is accused in multiple cases, according to police.
Police earlier said they had arrested five more persons in this connection.
On Saturday, a Cox’s Bazar court granted the police four days to interrogate Riaz Uddin Chhoton, manager of Zia Guest Inn where gang-rape took place.
Chhoton had been taken into custody as part of the investigation, said Cox’s Bazar Tourist Police Superintendent Md Zillur Rahman.
The woman had actually been staying at various hotels here for the past three months, police said on Friday afternoon.
Earlier in the day, police took the woman and her husband into custody for questioning.
Later, the woman was produced before a court where she gave a statement, according to Tourist Police Inspector Ruhul Amin.
The woman claimed she had gone to Cox’s Bazar with her husband and their eight-month-old baby on Tuesday. At Laboni Beach, the husband and a stranger got into an altercation after bumping into one another in the afternoon.
In the evening, some men picked up the husband and the child in an auto-rickshaw, while three others took the woman to a secluded place and raped her.
Later, they took her to Zia Guest Inn and raped her once again after taking yaba pills.
The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) rescued the rape survivor at around 2am on Thursday and sent her to the Cox’s Bazar Sadar Hospital one-stop crisis centre for treatment.
On Thursday night, her husband filed a case over the incident that left the nation and the tourism industry in a state of shock.
People involved in various businesses in the city are concerned by such incidents and are afraid that the local tourism industry will suffer if the hotels and motels in the district are not monitored strictly.