The number of police personnel killed may rise, says Additional DIG Bijoy Basak of the police Rajshahi Division
Published : 05 Aug 2024, 09:15 AM
A local journalist has provided a horrific account of the killing of 13 policemen in an attack on Sirajganj’s Enayetpur Police Station.
Protesters marched to the area and began attacking the building, they said. At one point, they set it on fire. The police personnel came out one by one and they were beaten and killed by crushing their heads.
Photos from the scene show the body of one policeman being strung up with rope from a tree. The bodies of three policemen were thrown into a nearby pond.
The bodies of eight others were left on a heap next to a mosque. They had been stripped of their clothes and there were injuries on their heads.
The incident occurred on Sunday amid the anti-government non-cooperation movement called by the Anti-discrimination Student Movement.
A journalist who lives near the police station described their eyewitness account of the incident.
Students from Khwaja Yunus Ali Medical College and other institutions took to the streets around 10am. Activists from different anti-government political parties and the banned Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Chhatra Shibir joined them.
When the protesters threw brickbats, police responded with tear gas and bullets.
At 1pm, the protesters attacked the Enayetpur Police Station. The police personnel attempted to resist them, but could not. At one point, the police station was set on fire. As the fire spread, the police personnel left the station individually.
They were then grabbed and beaten to death.
Another witness gave a similar account.
They said the protesters marched from the south to Enayetpur Police Station. When police blocked them in front of the station, it led to a clash that lasted about an hour. Then, the police station was set on fire.
“The number of deaths may rise,” says Additional DIG Bijoy Basak of the police Rajshahi Division.
It is not yet clear how many police personnel were at the police station or provide information about any others caught in the clashes.
Sirajganj accounted for 27 of the more than 100 deaths that were reported across the country on Sunday. Six people were killed in an attack on a discussion at the Awami League office in Raigonj Upazila. Three others were killed in Sirajganj town in clashes between the Awami League and BNP.
Two bodies were recovered after the home of Sirajganj-2 MP Jannat Ara Henry was torched. The homes of Sirajganj-6 MP Chayan Islam, the district Awami League unit’s General Secretary Abdus Samad Talukdar and former MP Habibe Millat Munna were also attacked.
Another 40-50 ruling party activists were injured in the attack on the Awami League offices.
The bodies of the six people killed in these attacks are at different hospitals, says Upazila executive officer Nahid Hassan Khan.