The Burma Army (BA) arrested three people in Katha on Saturday and seized their properties the following day, forcing their families to leave their houses in the town in Sagaing Region.

A local source, who didn’t want his name published, told KNG that the regime suspects they’re involved in a bomb attack on a government building in the town that inspired George Orwell’s fictional novel ‘Burmese Days’.

Win Ko from Ward 8 and Soe Moe Lwin, a motorbike workshop owner from Ward 1, are being detained in a police station after the soldiers arrested them from their homes. Soe Moe Lwin’s wife was released the same day.

At the end of January, the BA searched the houses of Nyein Chan Aung and the owner of the Etein gold shop in the town’s Thaya Kon ward.

There’s frequent raids on houses in Katha Township, where the regime suspects family members of the People’s Defence Force (PDF) and the interim National Unity Government formed by deposed lawmakers, are living. There have also been repeated explosions in Katha in recent months. The township borders Kachin State, where there’s fighting against the Kachin Independence Army and the PDF.