Man accuses cops of shooting him after arrest in Ctg

A 20-year-old man arrested in Chittagong city's Amin Colony field on Sunday says police hours later deliberately shot him in the calf from a close range while the accused claim his cohorts fired the pellets during a gunfight with law enforcers.

Hasan, a resident of the colony and now undergoing treatment at Chittagong Medical College Hospital, said he was taken to Bayezid Police Station following the arrest at 5:00pm.

He claimed to have been shot after being taken to Oxygen, a place he was able to make out despite being blindfolded, around 2:00am yesterday, some two kilometres from the colony.

His mother Maya Begum told The Daily Star that Zakir Hossain, general secretary of Awami League's organisational ward 43's A unit, bribed police to maim Hasan.

Hasan and his friends had a scuffle with Zakir early July after the latter confronted and accused them of mugging a relative on the field, she added.

The officer-in-charge (OC), Pradip Kumar Das, said Hasan was arrested at 9:00pm with a kirich (a type of a knife) on his person and information he provided led to the seizure of 11 more from the residence of a local friend of his, Rahman.

He said a 15-member police team and Hasan were going to the residence to arrest Rahman yesterday around 2:00am when some 10-15 cohorts of Hasan shot at them from the field, leading to the 15-minute gunfight.

The OC claimed that Hasan was a member of a gang, “Tension Group”, engaged in mugging, land grabbing and working as hired thugs for the last three years.

Hasan became an accused for the first time in Zakir's attempted murder case which was filed following the scuffle, he said. Police have now filed two cases, under the arms act and over obstructing police duty, against Hasan.

The OC also refuted the bribe allegations. Zakir could not be reached for comment.