Police have recovered three bullet-riddled bodies of suspected drug peddlers from a trawler in Cox’s Bazar.
Five other men including one with bullet injuries were also detained from the same vessel around 6pm on Friday at the Fishery Ghat on Bakkhali river, Sadar Police Station Inspector (Investigation) Anwar Hossain said.
Those killed were identified as Amin Majhi, 45, ‘Kalu’, 45, and Zahir Ahmed, 35. Cox’s Bazar’s Additional Superintendent of Police Tofayel Ahmed said all three were ‘trading drugs’.
But the circumstances leading to the death of the three is not yet clear.
Police, Coastguards and one of those detained alive from the trawler have provided different versions.
An encounter took place between a Coastguards patrol and the drug smugglers around 5am on Friday, said Tofayel Ahmed while talking to bdnews24.com.
That could have led to the death of the three men, he said.
Teknaf Station Commander of the Coastguards Lt Quazi Harun-ur Rashid said based on a tip-off, Coastguards members tried to stop a trawler coming from Myanmar at the mouth of the Naf river near Shah Parir Dwip.
Rashid said the Coastguards fired at least 50 rounds when those in the trawler hurled homemade bombs at them.
The encounter left two Coastguards officers and one operating the Coastguards’ trawler injured, he said.
Rashid said that the trawler of the ‘smugglers’ managed to escape to Myanmar.
Harun-ur Rashid said he was not sure whether the three dead found in the evening were from the trawler they had encountered earlier in the day. “But it’s not impossible. We didn’t see clearly as the encounter happened in the dark.”
Condition of the injured Coastguards officers was critical, he said.
One of them, ME-1 Abdus Samad was sent to Combined Military Hospital in Dhaka while the other, AB Mohammad Faisal was admitted at the Navy’s hospital in Chittagong.
The boatman, Aman Ullah, was admitted at Teknaf Health Complex, Rashid said.
A case over the incident would be filed, he added.
However, the injured detained from the trawler, Md Hossain claimed they were fishermen.
“Ten of us boarded the trawler for fishing on Apr 17. We were attacked by a group of pirates around 6am Friday near the coast of Saint Martin’s Island,” he said.
“Three of us were killed in the shooting. Some including me jumped into the sea to save ourselves. We managed to get back on board the trawler later and reached the mainland in the afternoon,” claimed Hossain.
Cox’s Bazar Sadar police Inspector Anwar Hossain said the four other detained were identified as Rahmat Ullah, Ali Johar, Sultan Ahmed and Abul Kalam. -bdnews24.com
