Police in Cox’s Bazar said it have detained the brother of Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) chief Ataullah Abu Amman Jummani.
Md Shah Ali was arrested early morning on Sunday at Rohingya camp in the district’s Ukhiya upazila, said Superintendent Naimul Haque, the chief of Cox’s Bazar-based Armed Police Battalion (APBn).
“He was arrested on a tip-off from the Rohingay camp No 6 in possession of arms and drugs,” he said before identifying Shah Ali as ARSA chief Ataullah’s brother.
Details will be provided later, said the senior APBn official.
Law enforcers have repeatedly dismissed claims the armed Rohingya group is active in Bangladesh.
ARSA recently made headlines following the death of Mohammad Mohib Ullah, a Rohingya civil society leader.
Mohib Ullah, the chairman of a moderate Rohingya group known as the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights, was shot dead at his office at an Ukhiya refugee camp on September 29 last year.
His family claimed ARSA was responsible for his death.
On October 23, six people were killed after gunfire at a madrasa in the Moynarghona Rohingya camp in Ukhiya, which the locals also blamed on ARSA.
In August 2017, the Myanmar government began its military crackdown on the border state of Rakhine following an ARSA attack.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled the persecution by crossing the border into Bangladesh.
Counting Rohingya who had previously crossed the border, some 1.1 million of the Myanmar nationals are currently residing at camps in Bangladesh.