Staff Reporter :
A suspected attacker of a Hindu teacher in Madaripur was killed in a “shootout” with police at Bahadurpur union in the early hours of Saturday.
Golam Faizullah Fahim, who was in police custody, was shot when police took him with them to help capture his associates, Md Sarwar Hossain, Superintendent of Police, Madaripur, said.
Sensing their presence, miscreants started shooting at law enforcers, forcing them to open fire that triggered the shootout. “He was caught in crossfire,” the SP said.
The bullet-wounded Fahim was declared dead when he was taken to the Madaripur Sadar Hospital.
The body bored a bullet injury on the left side of the chest. He was also handcuffed. Local sources said, he was shot dead hours after a court send him on police remand to facilitate interrogation in custody.
Earlier on Wednesday, three youths hacked Ripon Chakrabarty, a mathematics teacher at the Government Nazimuddin College, with sharp weapons afternoon in an attempt to kill him.
The assailants first knocked at his door near the college’s main entrance and tried to chop his head off when he opened it, police said. Fahim was caught by the locals who had rushed to Ripon’s help hearing him scream.
The 18-year-old Fahim had appeared at the HSC exams this year from a college in Dhaka but disappeared without taking his chemistry test. He was involved with the banned Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, according to police.
Fahim remanded over attack on the Hindu teacher. Police, on information revealed by Fahim, started a case over the attempted murder against six people. On Friday, a court granted police ten days to question him (Fahim) in custody.
“Fahim told the police during interrogation about the location of a hideout of Hizb ut-Tahrir at Bahadurpur union’s Miarchar,” the SP said.
Fahim was produced before a Madaripur court on Friday, when police was granted ten days to quiz him in custody.
Fahim who lived in Uttara’s Dakshinkhan was reported missing by his parents five days before the attack on Chaktabarty. His father Golam Faruk filed a general diary after failing to trace him since the morning of Jun 11.
Fahim’s father works in an apparel industry while his mother Kamrun Nahar is a homemaker. The couple also has a daughter. They came to know about his whereabouts only after his arrest in Madaripur.
A senior Detective Branch officer, however, told the media that he was radicalised by a senior student at his college. “They would regularly meet at a library in front of that college in Dhaka.”
Police said that Fahim had revealed the names of five others who took part in the attack during the initial interrogation. The case initiated by police accuses six, including Fahim. The others are Salman Taskin, Shahriar Hasan, Zahin, Rayhan and Mejbah.
Police believe the accused planned to spread militancy in the country’s southern region by first striking in Madaripur, local police OC Ziaul Morshed said.
