Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan has said the police are not arresting anyone in connection with the BNP’s mass rally.
But the law enforcement agency was nabbing people accused in different cases or those who might commit acts of vandalism, the minister told reporters after an event in Dhaka on Saturday.
When asked about the transport strikes in Khulna, he said it was the owners and workers of buses and launches who had announced the strike and the government had no hand in it.
The police detained 13 BNP activists when they came to meet senior party leader Gayeshwar Chandra Roy in Khulna ahead of Saturday’s rally, leaders alleged on Friday.
They also claimed that the transport strikes had been enforced to prevent party supporters from joining its rally.
Thousands of leaders and activists of the BNP and its associate bodies, defying transport strikes and other obstacles, joined the party's mass rally in Khulna on Saturday.
The rally, organized by the BNP's Khulna city unit, started on the Sonali Bank premises in the city at around 11:30am -- two and half hours earlier than the scheduled time -- with recitation from the Holy Quran, reports UNB.