The members of the Bangladesh army recovered the body of a 35-year-old man after a ‘gunfight’ with a group of suspected criminals in village Gadalia under Jagannathpur upazila in Sunamganj Sunday night.
The deceased, Abu Sayeed, 35, of Tarapasha village of Kulanj union under Derai upazila in Sunamganj, is a construction worker by profession, the police said.
A member of the local union parishad said that the incident took place in village Gadalia at about 11:00pm on Sunday when a team of army had been chasing a group of suspected miscreants.
‘Abu Sayeed is an innocent person. He is a construction worker and was working at a home in Gadalia village,’ he said.
Locals said that there was a longstanding enmity between Kulanj union parishad chairman and Juba League leader Mohammad Ekrar Hossain and the local union unit president of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Atiqur Rahman, over establishing dominance in the area.
They said that the groups on several occasions locked in clashed and used firearms in the past.
The Inter Services Public Relation Directorate in a press release on Monday evening said that the Army conducted the drive as local people were in fear due to gunfights between two groups of miscreants.
‘When the army’s patrol team entered near Gadalia village, a group of miscreants opened fire indiscriminately. At one point, the Army retaliated by opening fire for self-defence and resisted them,’ the release said.
It said that the army recovered the body of Md Abu Sayeed from the spot after conducting a raid.
It said that the army arrested four suspected miscreants and seized five firearms, one bullet and six bullet proof jackets and some locally made sharp weapons in a drive based on information extracted from the arrestees.
It said that the arrestees were handed over to the police.Â
On Sunday night, a patrol team of the Bangladesh Army conducted a raid at Hatiya village of the Kulanj union when Ekrar and his supporters fled their homes and reached the nearby Gadalia village of the Jagannathpur upazila by a number of boats, the local people said.
They said that the army personnel also reached the Gadaliya village chasing Ekrar and his supporters where an incident of shootout took place when Abu Sayeed was killed.
Jagannathpur police station officer-in-charge Mahfuz Imtiaz Bhuiyan said that the army personnel recovered the victim’s body from the spot and said that he died after receiving a bullet from the miscreants’ side.
‘Preparation was underway to produce the arrested before the district judicial magistrate court,’ the police officer said.
