Police have recovered the body of a man with a gunshot wound from the Padma River in Natore’s Lalpur, the second such recovery in seven days, police said. Another man was wounded in the incident. The body was recovered around noon on Tuesday from a fishing boat on the riverbank in the upazila’s Writer Char area.
The dead man, Shahabul Islam, 45, was the son of Yunus Pramanik of Sara Gopalpur in Pabna’s Ishwardi upazila. The wounded man, Rabiul Islam, 37, was in the same boat, police said.
Police and local sources said that between about 1:45 a.m. and 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday, five or six unidentified men came to the char belt on motorcycles and fired indiscriminately along the riverbank. Shahabul Islam, who was in a shallow-engine fishing boat, was hit by a bullet in the upper part of his right shoulder, causing a serious wound to the front of his body, and a mark of injury was also found below his chin, police said. Rabiul Islam was wounded in the same incident and is said to have jumped into the river to save his life. After being informed, police recovered Shahabul Islam’s bloodied body from a boat on the riverbank in the Writer Char area around 3 p.m. on Tuesday.
Selim Mia, a sub-inspector at the Lakshmikunda river police outpost, said the dead man’s identity had been confirmed. An initial inquest found evidence of a gunshot injury on the body, he said, and the body was sent to the Natore Sadar Hospital morgue for an autopsy. Legal proceedings in the case are under way, he said.
Lalpur Police Station Officer-in-Charge Shafiqul Islam said the body had been recovered from the scene. It had not yet been confirmed who had carried out the killing or why, and the matter was being investigated, he said. No case had been filed over the incident so far.
Earlier, on June 9, a man identified as Azizul Haque Jharu, 35, was killed in a shootout between two sides over control of a sand quarry on the Padma River, police said. His body, with a gunshot wound, was recovered from inside a speedboat on the bank of the Padma in the border Charjajira mouza of Lalpur that day, and a speedboat was also seized from the scene.
The two consecutive shooting deaths in the Padma River and char belt within a short span have caused anxiety and fear among local residents, police said. Police said they were also investigating whether there was any link between the recent incidents.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report