DHAKA: Bangladesh’s opposition accused authorities of placing their leader under virtual house arrest Thursday, as tens of thousands of troops were deployed across the country ahead of general elections next month.

As two more people were killed in the build-up to the Jan. 5 poll, the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) said police were barring anyone from visiting their leader Khaleda Zia at her home in Dhaka.

The move comes after Zia, a two-time former premier and arch rival of current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, called for supporters to stage a mass march on the capital this Sunday aimed at scuppering the polls.

The BNP is one of 21 opposition parties which are boycotting the elections over Hasina’s refusal to stand aside and allow a neutral caretaker government to organize the contest.

The country’s largest Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, has also been banned from taking part.

“Since Wednesday she has been under virtual house arrest,” BNP Vice President Shamsher Mobin Chowdhury told AFP.

“Police are not allowing anyone, including party leaders and activists, to meet her. It is part of a government move to foil the Dec. 29 march for democracy.”

Deputy commissioner of Dhaka police Lutful Kabir confirmed that extra officers had been deployed outside Zia’s home in the upmarket Gulshan neighborhood but said the move was designed to “enhance her security.”

Police confirmed two senior BNP members, including a current lawmaker, were detained outside Zia’s home on Wednesday night but denied the arrests were made because they wanted to meet her.

Another BNP lawmaker was arrested separately in the capital on Thursday, police spokesman Masudur Rahman told AFP.

With Hasina and her Awami League party determined the election goes ahead, troops are being sent to nearly every corner of the country at the end of what has been an unprecedented year for political violence.

A total of 271 people have been killed since January, either in protests at the elections or by Islamists who have seen several of their leaders sentenced to death from crimes dating back to the 1971 independence war.

A ruling party activist was hacked to death in the western district of Rajshahi on Thursday, deputy police chief of the region Mostafa Kamal said. Local media said he was attacked for printing election posters.

A driver also succumbed to his injuries in Dhaka after his truck came under a petrol-bomb attack earlier this week, police said.

The authorities are expecting Sunday’s rally to further inflame tensions with Zia having made clear its purpose is to force a last-minute cancelation of the polls.

“This march is to say ‘no’ to these farcical elections and to say ‘yes’ to democracy,” she said in a speech on Tuesday.

The troop deployments are expected to infuriate the BNP which has accused the government of trying to set the army up against normal civilians.

Election Commission spokesman S.M. Asaduzzaman said that troops would be deployed in at least 59 of the country’s 64 districts.

“They’ll be used as a striking force if there is any violence and they will patrol important areas, streets and highways,” he told AFP.

While a small number of soldiers had begun taking up positions earlier this week, military spokesman Muhammad Reza-ul Karim said the mass deployment began Thursday and will continue until Jan. 9.