Unidentified assailants stabbed to death a local Juba League leader in broad daylight, at Pallabi in Mirpur area of the city, on Saturday. The victim was identified as Shah Ali alias Rocky, 35, son of Matiur Rahman Khokon of Mirpur Section-7, Road-5, House-568. He was the president of Ward 92 unit of Juba League, an associate organisation of the ruling Awami League.Eyewitnesses said Rocky went out from home at around 10:15am for breakfast. As soon as he reached the alley behind Concord Garments at Mirpur Section 7, a gang of assailants armed with lethal weapons attacked him and stabbed him in the chest, abdomen and neck. He was critically injured. Hearing Rocky’s screams, local people rushed to the scene and found him lying unconscious in a pool of blood on the road. They at once rushed him to Dhaka Medical College Hospital, where the doctors declared him dead.
Mirpur division deputy commissioner Imtiaz Hossain
told The Independent, “Law enforcement personnel are trying to arrest the killers and unearth the mystery behind the murder.”
Police sources said Rocky was allegedly killed by his political rivals, following a feud over the control of local Jhut trading (waste garments), extortion and establishment of supremacy in the locality.
Police picked up one person for interrogation, in connection with the murder.
Rocky is the third Juba League leader to have been killed on Dhaka’s streets this month.
On August 21, Mokhter Hossain, a vice-president of the Ward 24 unit, was hacked to death in Malibagh. On July 29, Reazul Huq Khan Milky, an organising secretary of the Dhaka City North unit Juba League, was gunned down in Gulshan by another leader of the same organisation.
Mohammad Sagar, the younger brother of the victim, said the killers may have been associates of Mahthir, a local criminal who was arrested from Barisal for firing at a garments owner and later killed in a Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) “gunfight” two months ago. “They believed that Rocky had a hand in Mahthir’s arrest and killing,” Sagar claimed.
“Besides, Rocky was involved in the trading of Jhut in Pallabi and Rupnagar areas. The control over the Jhut trading might have led to the murder, too,” he said.
Josna Begum, the elder sister of the victim, told The Independent at the hospital morgue, “Rocky had been married and had a 10-month-old daughter. Some 10 days back, Rocky had a tiff with local criminals Naju and Monir. After the incident, Naju and Monir threatened to kill Rocky.”
-With The Independent input
