A suspected Islamist militant was killed while two Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) personnel suffered bullet wounds in over an hour-long encounter between the elite crime fighting force and the suspects at Maddhya Badda in the capital early yesterday.After trading over 100 rounds of bullets with the suspects, Rab arrested one of them. The arrestee, Al Beruni alias Sabuj alias Rony, 22, claimed himself as an organiser of a quite unknown Islamist group, Islamic Dal, sources said.
Siddiqur Rahman, owner of the house where the gun battle took place, told The Daily Star that he heard Rony telling Rab members after being caught that they were members of a banned Islamist militant outfit Harkatul Jihad Al Islami (Huji), but now he is working to form another Islamist outfit, Islamic Dal.
Rab however had yet to officially declare the suspects as Islamist militants at the time of filing this report last night, although various sources said that had actually been the suspicion which led to the operation.
The dead suspect was identified as Kamal, 24, of Jamalpur, from where Abdur Rahman, the executed kingpin of another banned Islamist terrorist outfit Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), had hailed.
The injured Rab personnel -- Lieutenant Farhad Sarkar from Bangladesh Navy, and Shainik Kabul Hossain, were undergoing treatment at Combined Military Hospital in Dhaka. Farhad was hit in the thigh and the waist while Kabul was hit in the thighs and a hand.
Rab officials said a vein of Farhad's leg had been severed by the bullet hit and he was operated upon. Rab also said both of its wounded personnel are now out of danger.
Rab recovered four bullets, a sawn-off rifle, a revolver, two pistols, and seven bullets from the suspects' possession.
Tipped off, an eight-member team of Rab-2 led by Farhad raided a tin-shed mess at Comilla Para in Maddhya Badda around 1:30am. "As the Rab members knocked on the door of a room, the three criminals opened the door and fired at least eight bullets, leaving the two Rab members wounded," said Siddiqur Rahman.
He said as the Rab members got wounded, the crime fighting force retreated for cover and started firing back. During the gun battle that ensued, over 100 bullets were fired. At one stage of the gunfight the three young suspects came out of the tin-shed mess and tried to run away.
But the elite force members arrested Rony unhurt with a firearm in his possession after chasing the fleeing group for a few hundred metres. Rab also found wounded Kamal near Gulshan Lake and took him to a nearby hospital where doctors declared him dead. "We have arrested a criminal and interrogating him to know whether they have any other identities," Rab Legal and Media Wing Director Commander SMAK Azad told The Daily Star.
Siddiqur Rahman said two young suspects rented a room of the mess on December 3 for Tk 1,900 a month, one of whom identified himself as an employee of Destiny Group while the other gave his identity as a quality controller in a buying house. He said later another young man joined them as a lodger in the mess.