A Chattogram additional chief metropolitan magistrate court on Tuesday placed 63 foreign nationals on a two-day remand in a case filed over alleged online fraud and other cybercrimes in the city’s Khulshi area.

Additional chief metropolitan magistrate Muhidul Islam passed the order after police sought a seven-day remand for each of the accused, said Chattogram Metropolitan Police deputy commissioner, prosecution, Mohammad Hasan Iqbal Chowdhury.

The court also directed the Counter Terrorism Unit of the CMP to submit its investigation report within 20 days, he said.

CTU inspector Rasel Mahmud, the investigating officer in the case, sought the remand for interrogation. The 63 accused were produced before the court on Tuesday, and the remand hearing was held in their presence, he added.

Meanwhile, the police sought to show Mohammad Mohsin as arrested in the case against the 63 foreigners. Mohsin was arrested on 12 September after police recovered 118 grams of cocaine from a courier service in the city. Police have also sought his remand.

Khulshi police station officer-in-charge Mohammad Abdur Rahim said Mohsin was linked to the 63 foreigners and had rented an eight-storey building for them to live in.

He said Mohsin had sent 118 grams of cocaine to a person in Dhaka through a courier service several days before his arrest. The consignment was later returned.

‘While investigating the cocaine case, we came to know about the 63 foreign nationals,’ the OC said.

Earlier, the police arrested the 63 foreigners during a raid on an eight-storey building in the Jalalabad Krishnachura Residential Area under Khulshi police station on September 10.

Of them, 35 are from Laos, 21 from Pakistan, five from China, and one each from Nepal and Vietnam.

The CTU sub-inspector Mohammad Rezaul Karim filed the case with Khulshi police station under the Cyber Security Act, accusing the foreigners of committing financial fraud and forgery through information technology, illegally misappropriating money, and committing crimes through e-transactions in collusion with one another.

The police said the 63 foreigners were members of a cybercrime network operated from China and had come to Bangladesh seeking a safe base following crackdowns on such networks in Cambodia and Laos.