A member of Bangladesh Chhatra League in Chittagong city was hacked to death in the city’s Hamjarbagh area in the early hours yesterday, following a dispute over distribution of earnings from selling drugs, according to police.
Mohiuddin Mahmud, officer-in-charge of Panchlaish police station, said the victim, Mohammad Raju, 20, was a resident of the city’s Bibirhat area and a listed drug peddler, and his fellow drug dealers killed him after a disagreement over drug money distribution.
However, Raju’s brother Mohammad Alam claimed his brother was a local Chhatra League activist and was killed because he had made a stand against the extortionists in the locality.
Sources in Chhatra League also said Raju was a member of the ruling party’s student wing. They said he was a supporter of Khorshed Group, which was in feud with another Chhatra League faction led by Jabedul Alam Masud over drug sale, and his murder was a result of that feud.
However, Chhatra League’s Chittagong City General Secretary Nurul Azim Rony told the Dhaka Tribune that Raju was not a part of the organisation, and he was likely killed due to a dispute between two local groups over previous enmity.
Panchlaish OC said Raju’s killers hacked at him indiscriminately and left him critically injured beside the railway track in Hamjarbagh around Saturday midnight. Later, locals and his family members rushed him to Chittagong Medical College Hospital around 1:40am yesterday, where the doctor on duty pronounced him dead.
The OC further said Raju’s body had been sent to the CMCH for a post-mortem, and a case had been filed with Panchlaish police station against 16 persons, 10 of whom were unidentified. Police did not reveal the names of the six known accused for the sake of investigation.
Until this report was filed, no one had been arrested in connection with the case, but during primary investigation police found two persons named Johir and Khorshed, members of the victim’s group, to be involved in his murder, the OC told the Dhaka Tribune.
