Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal on Monday promised tough punitive actions against perpetrators of the overnight arson attacks and lootings in Pirganj saying the culprits were identified by now and several of them were arrested and manhunt was underway for the rests.
“Police identified arson the attackers and looters . . . they are miscreants,” he told reporters at his ministry office.
Kamal added: “This incident was suddenly triggered by miscreants. There were no casualties. However, property was lost, houses were burnt”.
Kamal said the government would rebuild soon the houses which were burnt or damaged.
Meanwhile, police said that they arrested 52 people so far on charges of the arson attacks and looting valuables from different houses and a coming operation was underway for more with supports of BGB and RAB.
The home minister said the incident sparked over a post on Facebook about ‘Kaaba Sharif’ by a teenage boy adding it was posted “either intentionally or whimsically” but everyone suffered in such incident.
He said police raided the place where the boy was staying, but the boy was not found.
“Police were deployed to protect the village and miscreants left the area and went to Raghunathpur union of Pirganj and set fire to several houses there,” he added.
According to the information, some 25 houses have been set on fire and more than 90 houses were looted and vandalized by miscreants, the minister said.
He said receiving information on the incident, additional police, APBn, RAB and BGB were sent to the scene at midnight and enforced a security vigil.
Kamal said the Prime Minister has already issued orders for appropriate rehabilitations for the affected and the “local administration distributed cash, sari-clothes among victims”.
Speaker Dr Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury, who is the local MP, took initiatives to rebuild the affected houses and provide supports to the affected people.
