Police nabbed about 40 leaders and activists of BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami in midnight special drives in different areas of the district yesterday.
The drive kept conducted before dawn from at dead hours of night, RMP sources confirmed.
Of them, 26 were arrested from Bagmara, Puthia, Godagari, Charghat and Mohonpur upazilas and 14 were from separate places under Motihar, Boalia, Shah Makhdum and Rajpara police stations.
All of the arrested were sent to jail after showing producing before a local court, confirmed Rajshahi Metropolitan police (RMP) Assistant Commissioner and its spokesman Ifte Khayer Alam.
They were shown arrested in different cases launched over arson, sabotage and destruction of public properties, Alam continued.
When contacted, RMP Commissioner Muhammad Shamsuddin told the Dhaka Tribune that aim of such sort of drives was to resist the acts of sabotage in the name of blockade, which would be kept continued in the future.
However, BNP’s joint secretary and also Rajshai city unit President Mizanur Rahman Minu urged upon the blockaders halting the Dhaka-bound goods-laden trucks anyhow.
The leader also urged the party activists to make a strong blockade at the major points in Rajshahi and Chapainawabganj so that the goods-laden trucks could not enter Dhaka from the northern districts.
Minu made the call in a rally after a procession in the city yesterday morning on the fifth consecutive day of the unidentified blockade enforced by the BNP-led 20-party alliance.
On the other hand, the long-route buses were seen plying on the highway in a large scale while many goods-laden trucks also left the district for Dhaka under protection from police and BGB members, said Rajshahi Highway Transport Group General Secretary Manjur Rahman Pitar.
No major incident of violence was reported during the blockade hours. In the morning, blockaders set fire to a plum-laden truck on the Chapainawabgang-Rajshahi highway in Kashimpur area of Godagari upazila.
