A suspected drug trader was killed in police firing during his relatives' “bid to snatch his son, also an accused in a narcotics case,” from the custody of law enforcement in Adampur village under Bijoynagar upazila of Brahmanbaria on Thursday.
Deceased Ayub Noor, 50, was a drug dealer and an accused in five narcotics cases, said police.
Thirteen people, including 10 policemen, were injured in the incident.
Raju Ahmed, officer-in-charge of Bijoynagar police station, said almost all the family members of Ayub Noor are drug dealers.
There are five cases against Ayub Noor, five cases against his son Arif Noor and 10 cases against another son Tofazzal.
There was a court arrest warrant out for Arif Noor, said the OC.
Bijoynagar police carried out a raid in the early hours of Thursday and arrested Arif from his house.
When he was being brought to the police station afterwards, his family members started shouting and surrounded the police officers from all sides, said the police OC.
At the time, they attacked the officers with locally made weapons and snatched away Arif, who was in handcuffs.
Ayub Noor, Salma Begum and Amon were injured when police fired eight rounds of rubber bullets in self-defence, added the OC.
The injured were first taken to Brahmanbaria General Hospital and from there were referred to Dhaka. Ayub died at a hospital in Dhaka, he said.
A search is underway to find Arif, added OC Raju.
However, relatives of the deceased claimed that some people came to pick up Arif at the house at around 3:30am on Thursday. They did not know whether they were police and came forward on suspicion of those people being robbers, they said.