Family members on Sunday alleged that many students were going missing for several days before ending up in court abruptly as members of law enforcement agencies were arresting them randomly from the streets.

Amid such allegations, police have arrested at least 500 people, mostly leaders and activists of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, in the past 24 hours between Saturday and Sunday, raising the number of arrests to nearly 10,000 in a special drive across the country since July 15 after violent student protests for a week.

Many family members said that they struggled to find the trace of their young relatives as law enforcement agencies were not admitting their arrests initially before they were found in court or police custody two to four days later.

A group of five friends, aged between 18 and 22, went out for evening snacks in the Mirpur 11 area at about 6:30pm on July 25 when seven to eight people, identifying themselves as detectives, interrupted and interrogated them for about an hour.

Seeking anonymity, one of them, who was spared later, told New Age that ‘detectives’ picked them up in a white microbus and seized their cell phones.

‘Later, they checked our phones and found some photos of protests. I was instructed to come out of the vehicle as I had a feature phone,’ he said.

He also said that ‘detectives’ freed him and instructed him not to share anything with anyone, and they picked up his friends.

A brother of one of the youths said that his brother participated in the protests but was not involved in any vandalism or violence.

He said that his family was unaware of his brother’s detention for three days, and they searched for him in different places.

‘My father visited the city’s Minto Road DB office every day to know my brother’s whereabouts but failed. No authorities gave us any information about my brother and his friends,’ he said.

After about three days, four of them were released from Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s detective branch office on Saturday afternoon, he said, adding that police asked them to stay at home.

‘Why did they [police] pick them up in this way, and why weren’t we informed about their whereabouts for three days?’ he posed a question.

Supreme Court lawyer Jyotirmoy Barua told New Age that no law allows any agency to pick anyone up and keep the person in custody for more than 24 hours.

‘In order to arrest someone, there must be specific charges or proper information of their involvement in criminal activities,’ he said, adding that keeping them under custody for two to three days after picking them up without giving any information to the families, meant they were abducted or kidnapped.

The trend is alarming, unconstitutional, and a violation of human rights, the jurist said.

Police denied the allegation of harassing students who had participated in the movement.

DMP joint commissioner (crime) Liton Kumar Saha told New Age that police were strictly instructed not to harass anyone.

‘We are not arresting anyone without proper information,’ he added.

Students who took part in the movement said that instead of investigating the murders of people killed during the protests by law and order forces, students were being harassed with various cases against them.

It has been alleged that students and common people, who did not participate in the movement but expressed their support on social media, were being arrested and facing police harassment.

A 40-year-old entrepreneur was picked up by a group of police from his house in the capital’s Mirpur area on July 24 in the presence of his wife, mother, and sister.

His sister, seeking anonymity, told New Age that he volunteered during the protest, supplying water and food to the agitating students in their area.

‘A group of people identifying themselves as law enforcement agency members came to our house and picked up my brother. We were not given any clues about him,’ she said.

Police did not provide them with any information after they communicated with the police, she said, adding that they later came to know that her brother was sent to jail on Friday in a case filed at the Mirpur model police station.

Terming the police act as ‘completely inhumane’, she said that every accused had the right to defend themselves and contact their family.

A Dhaka court on Sunday directed the authorities concerned to send Hasnatul Islam Faiyaz, 17, an eleventh-grade student of Dhaka College, into the juvenile centre, while a Dhaka court on Saturday placed him on seven-day remand in a case filed with Jatrabari police station, accusing him of killing a cop on July 24 during the quota protest.

Speaking to New Age on the premises of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s court on Saturday, Faiyaz’s uncle, Md Shamim, said that Faiyaz was picked up from his house on Wednesday night but was produced before the court on Saturday.

‘We have stood in front of the court every day since Wednesday to find Faiyaz, as we could not find any information about him,’ Shamim said.

The CMM court in Dhaka on Sunday placed eight people, including BNP senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, Jamaat-e-Islami secretary general Miah Golam Parwar, and former vice president of the Dhaka University Central Students’ Union Nurul Haque Nur, on five-day remand in a case filed with Kafrul police station on charges of vandalising the Kazipara Metro Rail station in Mirpur.

The other five accused are BNP leaders Qazi Sayedul Alam Babul, Aminul Haque, Sultan Salauddin Tuku, MA Salam, and activist Mahmudus Salehin.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police assistant deputy commissioner KN Roy Niyati said that they had arrested 2,764 people in the ongoing special drive following violent student protests, including 228 more people in 24 hours between Saturday and Sunday.

A total of 229 cases were filed with different police stations in DMP on charges of violence, he added.

The Rapid Action Battalion said that they had arrested a total of 304 people in Dhaka and outside the capital, including 14 in the past 24 hours.

Including these, at least 500 people were arrested in the past 24 hours in Dhaka, Chattogram, Sylhet, Rangpur, Narayanganj, Rajshahi, Barishal, Habiganj, Chapainawabganj, and Mymensingh, among other places, according to New Age correspondents.

The student protests seeking quota reform in government services saw at least 212 people killed in clashes and their aftermath between July 16 and July 27.