Bangladesh Army picks 21 on-duty journalists, staff members from office

The members of the Bangladesh Army allegedly picked up 21 journalists and staff members of an online news portal, the Bangladesh Times, from its office in the capital city of Dhaka on Saturday evening, reported a leading English language national daily New Age published from Dhaka.

The mobile journalism editor-in-chief of Bangladesh Times, Sabbir Ahmed, told New Age that those picked up from their office include journalists and staff members, including security guards and office assistants.

He said that they were picked up at about 9:30pm.

'I received a call via WhatsApp, and the caller told me that he was from Uttara Army Camp,' said the New Age report, quoting Sabbir Ahmed as saying.

Quoting the army member, Sabbir said that his media outlet published a video of a person during Friday’s protest of Inquilab Mancha in the capital, where the person was speaking against the army.

He said that the caller told him that they should not publish such a video.

A live video streamed at Bangladesh Times’ Facebook page minutes after 11:30pm showed that the 21 journalists and staff members were taken to the Army camp and all of them were released.

Earlier in December 2025, the offices of two leading newspapers- English-language daily The Daily Star and Bangla daily Prothom Alo- came under massive vandalism and arson.

They also assaulted noted journalist Nurul Kabir, Editor of the New Age, a leading English language newspaper published from Dhaka when Kabir, also President of the Editors Council of Bangladesh went to visit the spot in presence of the members of the law enforcing agencies.

Earlier, On February 5, 2025 the protesters under the banner of anti-discrimination student movement, demolished the residence of Bangladesh’s founding leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, housing the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum in Dhaka.

In another incident, zealots lynched a man of Hindu religion in the Mymensingh district in Bangladesh on Thursday night over allegation of hurting religious sentiments.

The interim government led by Muhammad Yunus lodged hundreds of murder cases against the Awami League leaders and activists, leaders of pro-liberation organisations, cultural activists and journalists indiscriminately.

The government also took various anti-liberation moves and indulged the activities and vandalisms by the July-August protesters, Islamists and religious fundamentalists all over the country.

US based newspaper The New York Times in a report entitled “As Bangladesh Reinvents Itself, Islamist Hard-Liners See an Opening” focused the rise of Islamists during the regime of Muhammad Yunus led government.

In February, 2025, a group of religious extremists stormed into a stall at a book fair in Bangladesh protesting against selling of a book written by exiled feminist writer Taslima Nasrin and forced the publisher to close the stall.

Read more: Bangladesh at risk as interim regime targets secular forces, favours extremists.