Rivalling BCL, Jubo League run amok in port city

Followers of two expelled leaders of Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) and Jubo League chased each other with sharp weapons and sticks yesterday afternoon in Chittagong city's CRB area, the same spot where a gunfight between the two in 2013 killed two passers-by.

Eyewitnesses and police said some 100 followers of former BCL central committee assistant general secretary Saiful Islam Limon gave chase to followers of former Jubo League central committee member Helal Akber Chowdhury Babor who were holding a rally in front of Mela Community Center around 1:30pm.

Helal's group had been holding the rally from 11:00am while Limon's followers gathered nearby in Sat Rastar Matha. The groups chased each other till 3:00pm and the locals reported hearing two gunshots and of two persons being injured.

Kotwali Police Station Officer-in-Charge Jashim Uddin said the groups were trying to establish supremacy. "We fired four rounds of bullets to disperse the groups," he added.

Limon claimed to The Daily Star that the chases occurred as Babor was trying to force him into refusing a railway tender bid he had won on October 6 and that Babor's men had been attacking his follower's houses in the morning.

Babor denied, saying he had nothing to do with tenders.

"It was not my group, rather the local residents who protested criminals carrying out many criminal activities including mugging and drug dealing," he said.

"Now I am in Dhaka. I have returned from Hajj four days ago. If anyone invokes my name in railway tender, then I will file a defamation suit," he added.

The June 24, 2013 gunfight over a Tk 1.5 crore railway renovation tender had left a Jubo League activist, Saju Palit, and a slum dweller, Amran Hossain, 8, dead.

Police filed a murder case accusing 87 of the groups including Babor and Limon. Both were expelled, arrested by police and freed on bail within a few months.