Seven crew members were killed in a brutal attack aboard a bulk carrier, the MV Al-Bakhera, on the Meghna River in Chandpur. It was later revealed that a disgruntled crew member, Akash Mondal Irfan, out of frustration over unpaid wages and months of mistreatment, stabbed the victims in their sleep with a fire axe, which was kept onboard as part of the vessel's safety equipment. Investigators disclosed that Akash purchased three blister packs of sleeping pills from a market in Pabna while procuring supplies for the cargo vessel.

According to a premeditated plan, Akash mixed three strips (30 pills) of sleeping pills into the curry served for dinner on the vessel. Jewel Rana, 23, the vessel's helmsman, was the sole survivor, albeit with his throat slit. Akash then boarded a passing trawler, pretending to go to the market to buy goods, and fled the scene. To evade arrest, he went into hiding in the Chitalmari area of Bagerhat, where he was arrested.

Miscreants allegedly torched 17 houses of the Christian Tripura community at Sarai union in Bandarban's Lama upazila on Christmas Eve. According to the victims, miscreants set fire to the houses and escaped after midnight as the residents went to a neighbouring village for prayers and celebrating Christmas, since there is no church in the new Tongjhiri Tripura Para. Locals said, 17 out of 19 houses of the Tripura community were completely gutted.

Locals said the Tongijhiri area had been inhabited by the Tripura community for a long time. But they were forcibly evacuated a few years ago when some people claimed the area had been leased out to the wife of a police officer and planted trees in the village during the Awami League regime. But they came back, built new houses and started living there following the fall of the AL regime, the locals said.

The interim government formed a seven-member commission to reinvestigate the 2009 BDR carnage, amid an outcry from the victims' families and political pressure. The Cabinet Division published a gazette notification to this end on Tuesday (Dec. 23). The seven-member commission will be led by former director general of BGB ALM Fazlur Rahman, while the other six other members are Maj Gen Md Jahangir Alam Talukder (Retd), Brigadier General Md Saidur Rahman (Retd), retired joint secretary Munsi Alauddin Al Azad, retired DIG of police Dr M Akbar Ali, Md Shariful Islam, associate professor at Dhaka University, and Md Shahnewaz Khan Chandan, assistant professor at Jagannath University.

The adviser to the Home Affairs Ministry, retired Lieutenant General Md Jahangir Alam Chowdhury, earlier said that the chief adviser approved the formation of the commission on Sunday. He shared the information while talking to journalists after the Border Guard Bangladesh Medal Award Ceremony held on the occasion of BGB Day 2024 at the BGB Headquarters in Pilkhana in the capital.

Hundreds of officials from the Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) administration cadre staged a demonstration at the Secretariat, voicing their opposition to a proposal by the Public Administration Reform Commission to reduce their promotional quota to the rank of deputy secretary. Currently, 75% of deputy secretary positions are reserved for administration cadre officials, with the remaining 25% allocated to other cadres. Earlier the reform commission's chief Abdul Muyeed Chowdhury told reporters that they will recommend keeping 50% of the deputy secretary posts for admin officials and the other 50% for officials from other cadres when it comes to promotion.

The protests are being led by Bangladesh Administrative Service Association (BASA) President Md Anwar Ullah. Officials from 25 cadres of the BCS, other than the administrative cadre, on Tuesday observed a one-hour work abstention in offices across the country, demanding elimination of discrimination in the civil service. They later demanded the removal of Muyeed Chowdhury as head of the reform commission.