Bullet-riddled bodies recovered

Police have recovered three bullet-riddled bodies of suspected smugglers from a trawler in Cox’s Bazar district. Five other men including one with bullet injuries were also detained from the same vessel around 6pm on Friday at the Fishery Ghat on Bakkhali River, Cox’s Bazar Sadar Police Station Inspector (Investigation) Anwar Hossain said. Those killed were identified as Amin, 45, ‘Kalu’, 45, and Zahir, 35. Cox’s Bazar’s Additional Superintendent of Police Tofayel Ahmed claimed that the three people were ‘drug traders’. However, the circumstances leading to their death is not yet clear. Police, Coastguards and one of those detained alive from the trawler have provided different versions. An encounter took place between a patrol team of Bangadesh Coast Guard and a group of armed smugglers around 5am on Friday, said Tofayel Ahmed while talking to bdnews24.com. That could have led to the death of the three men, he said. Teknaf Station Commander of the Coastguards Lt Quazi Harun-ur Rashid said based on a tip-off, Coast Guards personnel tried to stop a trawler coming from Myanmar at the mouth of the Naf River. Rashid said the Coast Guard fired at least 50 rounds of bullets when those in the trawler hurled homemade bombs at them. The encounter left two Coast Guard officers and one operating the Coast Guard’s trawler injured, he said. Rashid said that the trawler of the ‘smugglers’ managed to escape to Myanmar. Harun-ur Rashid said he was not sure whether the three dead found in the evening were from the trawler they had encountered earlier in the day. “But it’s not impossible. We didn’t see clearly as the encounter happened in the dark.” Condition of the injured Coast Guard officers was critical, he said. One of them, ME-1 Abdus Samad was sent to Combined Military Hospital in Dhaka while the other, AB Mohammad Faisal was admitted at the Navy’s hospital in Chittagong. The boatman, Aman Ullah, was admitted at Teknaf Health Complex, Rashid said. On the other hand, Md Hossain, one of the five injured detained from the trawler, claimed they were fishermen. Sadar police Inspector Anwar Hossain identified the four other detained from the trawler as Rahmat Ullah, Ali Johar, Sultan Ahmed and Abul Kalam, according to bdnews24.com.