A day after series of attacks and clashes between the followers of Sunni and Wahhabi Muslims, the common people in Chittagong’s Rangunia area were in panic even yesterday anticipating further violence.
Members of paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh, police and Rapid Action Battalion were deployed in the area since Saturday morning to evade any kind of violence, Hathazari circle Assistant Superintendent of Police AFM Nizam Uddin said.
Meanwhile, police refused to take cases when both the groups wanted to sue each other blaming for the violence.
Amid such volatile situation, the Sunnis yesterday held a rally on Rangunia College playground on the occasion of Eid-e-Miladunnabi.
But noted Islamic scholar Syed Mohammad Taher Shah, the Pakistan-origin Awlad-e-Rasul, decided not to join the event, Gausia Committee Bangladesh’s Joint Secretary General Mosahed Uddin Bokhtiar said.
At least 40 people were injured in attacks and clashes that began Friday night and continued until Saturday afternoon.
Police said the clashes erupted after some Wahhabi followers had attacked a rally of Sunnis in the upazila’s Safarbhata area on Friday night as a speaker delivered speech criticising the Wahhabi ideology, leaving 16 people including upazila Vice-Chairman Akhter Hossain injured.
The attackers torched a vehicle and vandalised some others along with some shops and houses of the Sunni followers, police said.
The Wahhabi ideologists were holding another rally in adjacent Kajirkhill area. Police said neither of the groups had permission to hold the programmes.
Following the attack, Sunni and Wahabi ideologists locked into clashes in the upazila’s Shilok, Chandraghona, Mariamnagar, Buijjar Dokan, Habiber Gotta, Chowdhury Gotta, Roajarhat, Ichhakhali, Gochora, Godown and Shantirhat areas from Friday midnight to 8am on Saturday.
At least 24 people were injured in the overnight clashes. Police fired several hundred bullets to disperse the vandals and tamed the situation.
Locals and police sources said at least 15 houses and 30 shops, owned by followers of both sides, were vandalised while some of them torched.
Rangunia OC Mohammad Waliullah said the groups had agreed to not engaging in further violence when warned by the local administration.
Citing such clashes “disgraceful for Islam,” Rangunia upazila Chairman Muhammad Ali Shah urged all to exercise restraint as the common people were worried over the incidents.
