Police have arrested Mashukur Rahman, chief adviser to the controversial e-commerce platform E-Orange, from the Kotwali area of the capital.

According to sources at Gulshan Police Station, a team from Gulshan Police, with assistance from Kotwali Police Station under the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP), conducted a raid in the Kotwali area at around 12:30pm on Tuesday and arrested him.

The information was confirmed in a statement signed by Niaz Mehdi, additional deputy commissioner of the Media and Public Relations Division of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police.

Preliminary information suggests that Mashukur Rahman has a total of 21 arrest warrants issued against him in cases filed at different police stations across the country.

Police said the arrested individual has been produced before the court.

Earlier, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) had accused 12 people of laundering Tk358 crore through E-Orange, according to a chargesheet submitted nearly three years after a case was filed with Gulshan Police Station in October 2021.

Investigators said E-Orange collected Tk957 crore from 315,570 customers between July 2019 and August 2021 by offering heavily discounted products under so-called "double money voucher" schemes. Many customers never received the promised goods.

The chargesheet alleges that former Gulshan police inspector Sheikh Sohel Rana, who was later dismissed from service, secretly operated the company along with his relatives, other company officials and business associates.

The accused include his sister and E-Orange owner Sonia Mehjabin, her husband and the company’s chief adviser Mashukur Rahman. The couple had jointly been sent to Kashimpur Jail in the case back in August 2021. Mashukur was later released and now arrested again.