Six men, arrested on poaching charges, have been killed in an alleged shootout with police in the Sundarbans.
Published : 09 Aug 2015, 06:03 PM
The ‘shootout’ took place in Khulna’s Koyra Upazila around 4:30pm on Sunday, police claimed.
But the law-enforcers failed to arrest anyone during their raid at Mandarbarhia Khal area.
Siddik Sana, 45, Rafiqul Islam, 38, Ansar Sana, 55, Mamun Gazi, 25, Majid Gazi, 35, and Bappi Hossain, 20, from Koyra, were killed in the so-called gunfight.
These men, along with a woman who are said to be members a poaching gang called ‘Ilias Bahini’, were arrested in the early hours with skins of three Royal Bengal Tigers, Koyra police said.
Khulna’s Superintendent of Police Md Habibur Rahman said police took the men along to raid their hideout in the Sundarbans to recover more tiger skins after they had confessed to the crime during primary interrogation.
He claimed other poachers opened fire on police as they were closing in on their hideout, prompting the officers to fire back.
“We recovered six bodies from the site after the gunfight,” the SP added.
He said five policemen, including the Koyra police OC were injured during the ‘firefight’. They were admitted at the Koyra Upazila Hospital.
Police also claimed to have seized four guns, a pistol, 50 rounds of bullets and sharp weapons from the scene after the ‘gunfight’.
SP Rahman said the bodies of the deceased would be taken to the Khulna Medical College and Hospital on Monday for autopsy.
The incident, at the beginning of which three tiger skins were recovered, took place after a recent government survey found that there are about 100 tigers left in the Bangladeshi part of the world’s largest mangrove forest.