28 youngsters detained on charges of homosexuality in Bangladesh

28 youngsters were detained from the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh today on charges of homosexuality. After detaining the youth from a community center in the area, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) said, the locals had complained against them for homosexual activities.

Jahangir Hossain Matubbar, Commander of Rapid Action Battalion, said the youths were arrested from Chaya Neer, a community center at Antibazar area in Keraniganj Upazila on Friday night. They are all between 20 to 25 years of age, and mostly students.

"For the last 27 months, every two months' intervals on Thursday night, these youths used to come from various areas of the country and spend the night at the community center. We have conducted drive there on the basis of the complaints of local residents," said Matubbar.

"We have found some indigenous items, condoms and lubricants. They have admitted of homosexuality performances by them in the initial interrogation," he said.

Although homosexuality has been legalized in different countries of the world, the law of in Muslim-majority Bangladesh sees it as a 'penal offense' in relation to the nature of 'sex outside norms'.

Matubbar also said that preparations are going to file a case against the detainees, under the Narcotics Control Act in Keraniganj Police Station.

LGBT rights campaigners and their supporters have long been subjected to mockery and assault, which sometimes proves to be fatal, by radicals in Bangladesh.

Xulhaz Mannan, editor of Bangladesh's only LGBT magazine Roopbaan, was hacked to death at his Dhaka home along with his friend Khandaker Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy, also a theatre activist, at the former's house on April 25, last year in an attack that was later claimed by militant group al-Qaeda's Bangladesh wing Ansar al-Islam.