[Bangla Daily Star] Police are certain that banned Purba Banglar Communist Party (PBCP) gunned down three policemen in Pabna but could not detect why the outlaws attacked the unarmed lawmen.
| Send in the Detective-Supervisors! This case takes superior detecting abilities. |
Locals hinted that the Red-Flag faction of PBCP might have killed the policemen to take revenge for continuous crackdown on them by law enforcers. Many of their fellows got killed in "crossfire" in the outlaw-infested regions over the last couple of years.
| Ladies and gentlemen of Rantburg, it appears there will be more Crossfire Gazettes in our future. Prepare yourselves to do it by the numbers... but not today. Today we mourn the death of three policemen, killed by Purbla Banglar Communist badmen in the line of duty. |
A band of around eight criminals armed with sophisticated weapons
| Definitely we need the Detective-Supervisors. Ordinary detectives are no match for sophisticated weapons. |
first caught the policemen around 7:00pm
| Henchmen are allowed to be awake that early? Never have I heard of a meeting of such before the dark hours of the night, when good people are long since a-bed. |
Tuesday in Dhalarchar of Bera upazila on a remote shoal in the Jamuna River.
| Dear me, all that? It's in a river, which gives us a chance of finding it. These Crossfire Gazettes have forced me to improve my mapreading skills. |
The criminals dragged the three to local Maldar Bazar and shot them dead.
| Dragged them? And in broad daylight, too, the vicious brutes! |
Moments before the assault, the gunmen chanted a slogan "Police er khoy, amader joy" [damage to the police, victory to us].
| Lawless, vicious brutes, with a nasty tendency toward bad doggerel. This drive toward originality must be suppressed, and quickly, before the sonnets appear. |
"After observing all these things we are sure that an outlawed group made the attack," Deputy Inspector General of Rajshahi Range Police Mokhlesur Rahman told The Daily Star yesterday.
| It takes a full deputy inspector general to develop such profound insights. |
The attackers used sophisticated SMG rifles, fired around 30-35 shots and launched the attack with a slogan. All these suggest they were outlaws, he added. | Police Sergeant Belal wisely remained silently in the background. |
Asked which outlawed group, he said it was the Red-Flag faction of PBCP.
The bodies of the slain policemen -- Sub-inspector Kafil Uddin, Nayek Abdul Wahed and constable Shafique -- were taken to their village home yesterday.
| We can be sure their mothers loved them, and were not alone in their grief. |
State Minister for Home Shamsul Haque Tuku visited the spot yesterday and directed the law-enforcement agencies to apply their maximum combat power to contain the extremists.
Inspector General of Police Nur Mohammed, Director General of Rapid Action Battalion Hassan Mahmood Khandker and other high officials accompanied the state minister.
Police and Rab have planned a massive crackdown combining forces from different adjoining districts to arrest the attackers.
| Let all miscreants beware! The Rab have taken an interest in the situation. 'Twas they, after all, who invented the by-the-numbers operation. |
The operation plan was taken at a meeting of top police and Rab officials at the office of Pabna superintendent of police yesterday afternoon with the IGP in the chair. The DG of Rab was also present.
During a visit to Dhalarchar it was found that most of the houses in the village where the policemen were killed were empty. No male or female was found for a talk despite visiting around 25 houses.
| How odd. What could that mean? |
They know what happens when the RAB takes an "interest". They wisely don't want to be the focus of that "interest".
The 32-square-kilometre shoal (char) near the conjunction of the Jamuna and Padma is home to around 25,000 people, mostly fishermen. The remote char has for long been used as a safe haven and hideout for different outlawed groups.
Police informant Abdul Gani
| Aka "Abdul the Weasel"... |
witnessed the killing as he was accompanying the victims during the attack. He said he along with four policemen from Dhalarchar camp went to Daspara to collect firewood in a buffalo-cart on Tuesday afternoon. "When we were returning to the camp after collecting the firewood, eight to 10 masked people equipped with firearms appeared and asked us to halt," he said.
One of the three slain policemen walking behind the wood-laden cart identified themselves as police, but the gunmen continued to ask them to halt and raise their hands, he added. "Kafil Uddin sir argued with them and asked why they would raise their hands and who they were. The gang then grabbed them, dragged them away to Maldar Bazar and gunned them down with a slogan," Gani continued.
"Another policeman luckily escaped as he was a little away to answer a call of nature. The gunmen did not bother about the cart driver as he passed the place a little earlier," Gani added.
The cop with the weak bladder was either very lucky or.....something else.
During his visit to the area, the state minister also vowed that everyone involved in the killings will be arrested and brought to justice. He sought help from people of the locality to help the law enforcers by providing information about the killers.
Which explains why the people are no where to be found
Later, the state minister along with the high officials of police and Rab took part in the namaj-e-janaza of the three policemen at Pabna police lines mosque around 2:00pm. Earlier, autopsy of the bodies were carried out at Pabna General Hospital morgue.
"They're dead, Jim."
"Dr. Quincy, how do you do it!" |
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