65 extremists from three districts surrender in Sirajganj and return to normal life
Sixty-five members of Sarbohara extremist groups from Sirajganj, Pabna and Rajbari districts have surrendered and returned to normal life. They surrendered to the SRB at a ceremony held in Sirajganj at 12:30pm on Sunday. Officials at the ceremony said necessary measures would be taken to rehabilitate those who surrendered.
State Minister for Social Welfare Farzana Sharmin MP attended the ceremony as chief guest. She said: 'Through the social contract, we are pledged to give them their rights — we must be able to deliver those rights to them.'
The state minister added that the present government is striving to build a changed Bangladesh. Addressing those surrendering, she said: 'From today you will return to normal life. Whatever you need, the present government will arrange it.'
Chaired by Additional DIG Md Atikul Rahman Mia, commanding officer of SRB-12, the ceremony was also addressed by SRB Director General Ahsan Habib Palash, Sirajganj-5 MP Amirul Islam Alim, Rajshahi Range Additional DIG Md Ashik Saeed, Rajshahi Additional Commissioner (Development) Shahana Akhtar Jahan and SRB Additional Director General (Operations) Colonel Iftekhar Ahmed. Senior officials of the Sirajganj district administration and police, along with political figures, were also present.
There was a time when the free movement of Sarbohara extremists turned Sirajganj, Pabna and Rajbari into districts of fear. Extortion, robbery, snatching and murder were everyday occurrences. Over time, through successive rounds of surrender to law enforcement agencies, the districts have become largely free of extremism.
In Sirajganj, Pabna, Rajbari and neighbouring districts, 14 extremist organisations were active in the name of Marxist-Leninist and Maoist ideology. Among them were the Purba Bangla Communist Party ML (Lal Pataka), the Purba Bangla Sarbohara Party (MBRM) and the Purba Bangla Sarbohara Party (Janajuddha). These organisations began spreading from 1968.
The extremist organisations expanded widely in the 1980s and 1990s. Their top leaders misled young people into joining. Holding ordinary people hostage and staging open armed drills, they established a reign of their own; several thousand people were killed during that period.
Later, conflicts over dominance and leadership split the organisations into factions and sub-factions, and they began killing one another. That only deepened the fear among ordinary people.
In 1998, at Kamarkhanda in Sirajganj, more than a hundred extremists, including a top leader, laid down their arms and surrendered to the then home minister, the late Mohammad Nasim. Continuing that process, 596 extremist members surrendered to police in Pabna on 9 April 2019.
On 21 May 2023, a further 323 extremists from seven districts surrendered at the RAB-12 office in Sirajganj. Sunday's surrender is the latest chapter in that sequence, bringing another 65 people back to normal life.
