Normalcy is yet to return to the many villages in Roopganj and Kaitpara where most of the males fled home fearing arrest in the cases filed by the Rapid Action Battalion and the police after Saturday’s clashes between the locals and the army over land purchase.
One person had died and two people remained missing since the violence in which at least 50 people were injured, many of them sustaining bullet wounds, after the security forces opened fire on villagers protesting at being forced to sell their lands for an army housing project in the area.
Mohammad Abdur Rafiq, father of Mostafa Jamal Haider who succumbed to bullet injuries at National Institute Cardiovascular Diseases in Dhaka on Sunday, did not find anyone when he went to neighbours’ houses at Harianadirpar to ask them to join the qulkhwani of his son.
‘Last night (Monday) I went to some of my relatives and neighbours but found many houses locked while there were only females in other homes,’ said Rafiq describing the situation as frightening.
‘The atmosphere is ghostly in the villages after sunset…It looks as if curfew has been clamped…There are only police patrols on the deserted roads at night,’ he said.
A few roadside teashops which were found open in the daytime, pulled the shutters before dusk on Tuesday. All shops and business establishments in the area remained closed three days after the incident.
‘People are in panic as two cases have been filed,’ said inspector Akheruzzaman who is investigating both the cases filed by police and the RAB accusing 4,000 unnamed villagers.
Nearly 1,700 additional police and armed police battalion personnel from adjoining districts have been deployed in Tanmosori, Nawara, Purbagram and Baraichari where locals on Saturday attacked army camps and torched one of them in protest at ‘forced purchase’ of lands for an army housing project in the area.
The investigation officer said that a general diary was filed by the police over the death of Jamal. Besides, there was a case of unnatural death with Sher-e-Banglanagar police station in Dhaka.
‘Nobody from the family has come to file a case over Jamal’s death,’ he said.
Rafiq said he refrained from filing a case over his son’s death fearing reprisals. ‘We have already been accused in the cases filed by the police and RAB and can I win over the army by filing a case,’ he asked. He said that he was not given time even to complete the funeral rites for his son who was buried hastily.
Families of Masudur Rahman and Saidul Islam of Baniarchani village, who remained missing since Saturday’s incident, filed two separate general diaries with Roopganj police station on Tuesday.
