The Chittagong Metropolitan Police (CMP) has arrested eight people involved in the attack, vandalism and looting of an internet service provider in Chittagong city after the extortion demand was not met. They were arrested in a joint operation by CMP’s Chawkbazar Police Station, multiple Chowkash teams and RAB-7. Police said that on July 11, a person called the owner of Digital Dot Net (DDN), which has been providing internet services in Chittagong for a long time, on WhatsApp and threatened him by introducing himself as “David Emon”. At that time, a one-time extortion of 2 crore taka and later 1 million taka every month was demanded. When the owner of the company refused to pay the extortion, various threats were made to the owner.
In continuation of this, on July 13, at around 12:30 pm, an armed group of 30 to 40 people carried out a pre-planned attack on the DDN office on the third floor of the Mariam Heights building located in the Monumiyaji Lane area of Chawkbazar Police Station. The attackers entered the office, intimidated the officials and employees and vandalized various items including computers, laptops, printers, fingerprint machines, furniture, glass doors. It is alleged that about 1.5 million taka of damage was caused.
The attackers also took away Tk 47,000 in cash , three Android mobile phones , a Canon printer and the shoulder bag of the company’s director, Oriful Islam, from the office. The statement mentioned that the bag contained approximately Tk 3.5 million for paying employees’ salaries .
After a case was filed with Chawkbazar Police Station in this incident, several teams of CMP, Chawkbazar Police Station and RAB-7 conducted raids in different areas of the city on the night of July 14 under the direction of CMP Police Commissioner Hasan Md. Shawkat Ali. In the raid, Md. Yunus (41), Imran Hossain Chang (31), Akbar Hossain (24), Md. Sumon (27), Md. Monir alias Keherman (38), Md. Gias Uddin (21), Md. Nayan (20) and Mohammad Abdul Nahid alias Farhad (28) involved in the incident were arrested.
The arrested have been handed over to the court. Police said that the investigation into the case is ongoing and the operation to identify and arrest other accused involved in the incident is ongoing. According to police information, there are multiple cases against some of the arrested people for extortion, weapons, drugs, human trafficking, kidnapping, smuggling, robbery and other crimes. In particular, there are 12 cases against Imran Hossain Chang and 8 cases against Md. Nayon, the police said. Meanwhile, the identity and photo of another accused in the case have not been released as the operation to arrest him is ongoing, the CMP said.