Coastguards rescued a fisherman, following a fierce gun battle yesterday with the forest robbers in Morakaga Canal under Koira upazila in the Sundarbans.
The law enforcers also seized 20 firearms, 310 bullets and 14 sharp weapons from the spot, said sources in Coastguard Mongla west zone.
Acting on a tip-off, a team of the coastguard cordoned off Morakaga Canal at 6.00pm on Saturday and later raided a den of the notorious ‘Alif Bahini’ in the area.
Sensing the presence of the coastguard members, the robbers opened fire on the team, prompting them to retaliate.
After about five hours of gunfight, coastguards rescued the abducted fisherman and seized four single barrel guns, five shooter guns, six light guns, five pipe guns, 310 bullets, 14 sharp weapons, 7.5kg vension and 27 bottles contraband phensidyl syrup from the den while the members of the forest gang managed to flee.
The rescued fishermen is Asadul Islam, 35, son of Abdus Sattar of Golkhali village under Koira upazila in Khulna. He was abducted by the gang a few days ago for ransom.
Asadul was handed over to his family member after giving first aid while the seized arms and ammunition to Koira police station.
Source: The Daily Star
Instead of purchasing outmoded weapons at the expense of the country’s valuable forex, the coast guard should be better equipped with modern weapons, gunboats and choppers. The coast guard should have choppers to shoot down the pirates and thugs scourging the Sundarbans as well as the hilsha and other valuable fish smugglers. In these matters the coast guard and the other law-enforcing agencies should adopt zero tolerance if they are at all patriots. Just cordon off the pirates and gun them down from the chopper, if necessary from helicopter gunships, such as the Iranian govt did with the drug smugglers. In fact we are sometimes compelled to think that our govt perhaps really don’t want to eliminate the pirates and the drug runners. The Iranian govt gunned down 75/76 drug runners in one instance since when drug running came down to the lowest. We are disappointed to see that our police, RAB, Coast guards are not well equipped with both sophisticated arms and transport vehicles to deal effectively with the criminal gangs. We also can’t understand how criminals can escape even from police custody.