Army man hacked at cantt checkpoint [ Tritiyo Matra News ]

Army man hacked at cantt checkpoint

Local November 11, 2015

An assailant hacked an army soldier at a checkpoint at Kachukhet at Dhaka Cantonment on Tuesday morning.
The victim, Lance Corporal Samidul Islam, posted at 13 Military Police Division at Dhaka Cantonment, was hacked six days after assailants stabbed to death a police constable at a checkpoint at Ashulia on the outskirts of Dhaka on November 4.
Earlier on October 22, Darussalam police station assistant sub-inspector Ibrahim Mollah was stabbed to death at a checkpoint in the capital’s Gabtali area.
An Inter Service Public Relations Directorate release said that the military police member was ‘slightly injured’ in an attack with a sharp weapon by a ‘pedestrian’ while the Dhaka Metropolitan Police commissioner Asaduzzaman Mia at a briefing at DMP headquarters said that the attack was ‘pre-planned’.
The ISPR release signed by assistant director Muhammad Reza-ul Karim Shammee said that other on-duty military personnel detained a suspect and an investigation into the incident had already been begun ‘to reveal the details.’
DMP assistant commissioner (Pallabi zone) Zakir Hossain said the injured Lance Corporal Samidul was rushed to Dhaka Combined Military Hospital and is condition was now stable.
He said that the military personnel could nab the attacker and he was taken to military custody for interrogation.
The police, however, did not disclose the identity of the attacker.
Witnesses said that Samidul was on-duty at the checkpoint near the office of Directorate General of Forces Intelligence.
He stopped a rickshaw as it was heading to the cantonment in the wrong lane and was talking with the rickshaw-puller at at about 9:30am, when he was attacked, the witnesses said.
‘The army man [Samidul] was talking and approaching the rickshaw…at that time, a machete-wielding bearded man aged about 30 approached him on foot from the north-west corner of DGFI office and hacked him from behind’,’ said a shopkeeper near the checkpoint.
Hearing Samidul’s scream, three of his fellows and local people chased the attacker and nabbed him from a house at North Kafrul.
‘After the attack, the attacker ran wielding the machete…He tried to enter different lanes and finally entered a house at North Kafrul,’ said a Bangladesh Navy College student, who was among the chasers.
‘The army personnel were empty handed…They asked the attacker to drop his dagger but he threatened to attack them before entering the house,’ he said.
‘After the attacker entered the house, the army personnel called some other army personnel…They entered the house and nabbed him from the fourth floor,’ said a neighbour of the house.
He said that the attacker aged about 30 was in lungi and shirt. He had long beard.
A resident of the house said they had no idea about who entered the house.
‘I heard noise from the compound and saw some army men…Later, they entered our house and catch a man,’ she told New Age from inside the gate.
Kafrul police station officer-in-charge Shamim Shikder said that the police picked up two men including the caretaker of the house where the attacker entered.
‘We have picked up them for interrogation…They are not shown arrested,’ he said.
They were identified as Sumon, a resident of the house, and Harun, the caretaker of the house.
The on-duty army personnel at the checkpoint declined to comment.
No case was filed till 9:00pm on Tuesday, Shamim said.
After the attack, DMP commissioner Asaduzzaman at a briefing said that the police had information that ‘identified quarters who were under trial and who had killed people in arson attacks recently in the name of movement’ were attacking the members of law enforcement agencies.
‘The attack [on the army soldier] was pre-planned,’ he said.
‘They had attacked policemen at Gabtali and Ashulia few days ago and now attacked military police on Tuesday,’ he said adding, ‘They are trying to unleash terror and panic in the country through such attacks.’