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DHAKA, Sunday (AFP)

A ruling party activist has become the 23rd person to die in custody in Bangladesh's three-week-old army-led drive against crime, officials said Sunday.

Abu Sufian, 34, an activist for Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party, died Saturday in custody, a day after he was detained from his Dhaka home where a pistol was seized, home ministry officials said.

They said the cause of death was being probed.

Sufian is the second ruling party activist to die in custody since Friday when a 22-year-old leader of BNP's youth front died in the southeastern Feni district after being grilled by the army over arms and explosives reportedly found with him. Relatives claim many of the 23 people who have died after being detained had been tortured, but officials say they had been in poor health and that complaints of custody deaths were being investigated.

Thousands of troops were deployed across Bangladesh on October 17 after Zia, who also holds the defence portfolio, acknowledged she had not curbed crime in her first year in power.

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