Culture & Society

Dhaka DB detains 84 at house owned by senior police officer

The house belongs to Additional DIG Abdullah Al Zahir, who works at police headquarters. The Detective Branch says DJ parties and drug gatherings were held there.

ScrollBeat DeskPublished: 20 Oct 2026, 19:20

Bangladesh Police headquarters in Dhaka, where Additional DIG Abdullah Al Zahir is posted in the maintenance and repair branch. Wasiul Bahar / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Detectives detained 84 people, including 26 women, in a raid on a house in Dhaka's Bhatara area that belongs to a senior police officer, officers said on Tuesday.

The house is owned by Additional DIG Abdullah Al Zahir, who is posted at the maintenance and repair branch of Police Headquarters, Bangla Tribune reported. Neither he nor his family lived there, and the property had been rented out.

The Detective Branch of Dhaka Metropolitan Police began the operation shortly after midnight on Monday and kept it going until noon on Tuesday. DB chief Shafiqul Islam confirmed the detentions on Tuesday afternoon.

Officers acted on a tip that DJ parties and gatherings involving alcohol and drugs were held at the house regularly, the DB said. Banglanews24 reported that 58 of those detained were men and 26 were women.

No charges against those held were announced immediately, and police did not say what substances were seized. It was not clear whether the owner knew what was happening at the rented property.

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The campus of Rajshahi University in Bangladesh, photographed in May 2024. Tanvir Rahat / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Rajshahi University sent a seriously injured student to Dhaka by air ambulance on Tuesday afternoon for specialist treatment, university officials said.

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A corner view of the Bangladesh Secretariat in Dhaka, photographed in September 2022. Wasiul Bahar / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Government employees will receive higher basic salaries this month under the new national pay scale, but their allowances will stay at the rates that applied on 30 June 2026, the Finance Division said in a notification on Monday.

The order covers staff at ministries, divisions, departments and agencies, as well as state-owned enterprises and autonomous institutions.

Allowances will continue to be paid as a percentage of the basic salary employees drew before the new structure took effect. The government said the change will hold until the basic salaries set in the Service (Pay and Allowances) Order 2026 come into force.

That order was issued on 19 September, a month before Monday's notification. It set the minimum basic salary at Tk 20,000 and the maximum at Tk 1,56,000.

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