'Shootout' story sounds hollow

Mystery shrouds the deaths of two people who were killed in a so-called gunfight with Rapid Action Battalion in the capital's Jatrabari area early Wednesday.

Rab-10 officials claimed Shakhawat Hossain Rahat and Mujahidul Islam Jihad were killed in a gunfight that erupted after the duo exploded a petrol bomb and opened fire on a patrol team of the elite force around 2:15am that day.

However, families of the victims claimed Rahat had been abducted and Jihad had gone missing more than a week before the incident.

The family of 20-year-old Rahat, who worked at an automobile spare parts shop in the capital's Farmgate area, alleged that a group of three to four men picked him up in a microbus on Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue on January 21 and sped away.

"He had been missing since then," said Rahat's mother Sufia Begum, who filed a case with Tejgaon Police Station on January 27 in connection with her son's abduction.

Rahat's employer Shah Alam filed a general diary with the police station a day after the abduction.

"Rahat stepped out of the shop to buy three lunch packets from the adjacent Sugandha restaurant … Then I suddenly heard screams: 'They are taking him away!' Later we found his cell phone switched off,” said Shah Alam.

The family came to know about Rahat's fate yesterday and received the body from the morgue of Dhaka Medical College.

However, Mufti Mahmud Khan, director of Rab's Legal and Media Wing, dismissed the family's claim and reiterated that the two men were killed in a gunfight after they had attacked a Rab team.

When his attention was drawn to the abduction case, Khan said: "Families of culprits say many things but those are not acceptable".

Meanwhile, the other victim of the "shootout" -- Jihad, a vegetable trader from Karwan Bazar kitchen market -- had been traceless for 11 days, said his brother Jahedul Islam Sohag.

"I saw his photograph in a newspaper. Then I came to the [DMC] morgue and identified my brother's body," he told The Daily Star yesterday.

"As far as we know, he had no political affiliations whatsoever," he said, adding Jihad didn't maintain much communications with his family since he had a feud with his father 12 years ago.

Both the "shootout" victims hailed from Laxmipur district.

ANOTHER KILLED IN "SHOOTOUT"

A man was gunned down in a "shootout" with police in the capital's Mirpur area early yesterday.

Identity of the dead, aged about 22, could not be known immediately.

The body received four bullets and all in the chest, sources in the DMC morgue told this paper.

Sub-inspector Jahirul Islam of Mirpur Police Station claimed that a group of BNP and Jamaat-Shibir men hurled petrol and crude bombs and opened fire on a patrol team of police in Purba Manipur area around 3:00am. The law enforcers then started firing in retaliation. The man was caught in the line of fire and sustained bullet wounds.

He was declared dead after having been taken to the DMCH, the SI said, adding his cohorts had managed to flee the scene.

With the latest victim, at least 16 people have so far been killed in alleged gunfights with law enforcers since the BNP-led alliance enforced the ongoing countrywide blockade on January 6.