Around 700 outlaws from 15 districts of four divisions are set to surrender to police in Pabna on April 9, police officials in Rajshahi said yesterday.

Home Minister Asaduzzman Khan is scheduled to attend the event to be held at Pabna's Shaheed Aminuddin Stadium where the outlaws will surrender, said Nisharul Arif, additional DIG of Rajshahi Range Police.

He said many of them would turn in their firearms during the surrender in the presence of top-level police officials, including IGP Mohammad Javed Patwary.

The surrendering outlaws belong to Purbo Banglar Communist Party (PBCP), Purbo Banglar Sorbohara Party (PBSP) and New Biplobi Communist Party (NBCP).

They are from Rajshahi, Natore, Naogaon, Bogura, Joypurhat, Pabna and Sirajganj districts under Rajshahi division; Rangpur under Rangpur division; Tangail, Rajbari and Faridpur under Dhaka division; and Khulna, Satkhira, Jashore and Narail under Khulna division.

A wing of the home ministry is organising the event, a senior police official seeking anonymity said, adding that the outlaws would surrender on their own amid tight security.

A police official in Rajshahi said the surrender would help them in maintaining law and order, as law enforcers had to dedicate substantial time to investigate their activities in the past.

Among the listed outlaws, at least 41 are going to surrender from Bagmara upazila of Rajshahi.

They include former PBCP regional commander Abdur Razzak alias Art Babu, who was accused in the case for murdering Chanchal Kumar Chondo, 42, vice president of Taherpur municipality unit of Jubo League, in December last year.

The communist outlaws were inspired by the Indian Naxalite movement, but in the 1980s, they began killing politicians and businessmen for extortion, in the name of eliminating “class enemy”.

In 2004, when law enforcers failed to contain them and the outlaws went on killing people in Rajshahi region, Islamist outlaws took the opportunity and surfaced.

Vowing to eliminate the communist outlaws, the banned militant outfit Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh first emerged in Rajshahi's Bagmara on April 1 that year and killed 22 people in one and a half months.