DHAKA: A Bangladesh security force commander was arrested on Thursday over the theft of 20 million taka ($246,000) of devotees' donations from a Sufi shrine, police said.

Lieutenant Colonel Zulfiqar Ali, 45, is accused of organising the operation to steal the money from the Talsara Darbar Sharif near Chittagong last year when he was head of the city's Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) division.

“We've arrested Colonel Ali from (the capital) Dhaka this morning for leading nine of his junior officers to the sensational robbery,” Mohammad Shahjahan, police chief of the local district of Anwara, told AFP.

“They tied up the sufi and confined him and his family in a room before looting 20.07 million taka that Muslim devotees had donated,” Shahjahan said, adding that Ali had later collected the largest share of the money.

Local media said Ali used the money to buy a luxury flat in Dhaka.

Created in 2004, the paramilitary RAB has a poor public image due to allegations of torture and being a government-controlled “death squad” responsible for hundreds of extrajudicial killings.

International campaign groups such as New York-based Human Rights Watch have called for it to be disbanded.