Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) members picked up Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi from a house at Baridhara in Dhaka on Saturday midnight.  

BNP chairperson’s media wing member Shamsuddin Didar said a team of RAB-1 conducted a raid on the house and held Rizvi at about 2:45am.

Earlier, the BNP-led 20-Party Alliance on Friday called a 72-hour countrywide hartal from 6:00am on Sunday as part of its movement for restoring democracy and people’s voting right.

Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, on behalf of the alliance, announced the shutdown programme.

Plainclothes police had arrested the BNP joint secretary general on January 3 and then got him admitted to Apollo Hospitals in the city on the same day as he complained of illness.  

On January 7, Rizvi left the hospital secretly.