Police in Bangladesh are holding 2,971 soldiers in custody for staging a mutiny at a military base in the capital three months ago in which dozens of officers were killed, a top official said Tuesday. The revolt raised fears for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's newly elected civilian government, which came to power in January after two years of military-backed rule in the South Asian country.
Colonel Jahangir Kabir Talukdar, director of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) paramilitary force at the centre of the mutiny, said around half of the troops were picked up in the capital, with the rest scattered across the country.
"We have arrested 1,390 troops in Dhaka and another 1,581 from border posts throughout the country. All of them have been charged with sedition and were sent to jail," he told AFP. The standoff began on February 25 in the capital where 74 people, including 57 senior army officers were killed by rank-and-file soldiers, but violence spread to other parts of the impoverished nation.