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Members of Border Guard Bangladesh, Rapid Action Battalion and other law enforcement agencies have been patrolling the Panchagarh town and adjacent areas on Saturday to ward off further trouble, a day after the violence over an event of Ahmadiyya community that left two people killed and dozens injured.
Though the law enforcers are on high alert, tension has been prevailing in the area, reports UNB.
Md Abdul Latif Miah, officer-in-charge of Sadar police station, said the law enforcers have been deployed at several points to avoid further disturbance.
The bodies of the deceased were handed over to their families without autopsies following the request by their relatives around 1:00pm, he said.
He also said that neither any case has so far been lodged in this connection nor anyone has been arrested.
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat, at a press conference at Ahmadnagar village on Saturday, said one of its members Jahid Hasan, 23, was hacked and beaten to death by the opponents of the community. More than 70 members of the community suffered serious injuries and were shifted to Rangpur Medical College Hospital and some of them require to be shifted to Dhaka, they said, says a press release of the community.
The community leaders said more than 150 homesteads of Ahmadiyya community members in village Ahmadnagar and 81 homesteads in village Shalshiri came under the attack of the bigots and they carried out a looting spree there and set the homes on fire.
The community leaders said before organising the regular yearly event, they held several meetings with district administration and the government high-ups and all of them gave a green signal to hold the convention assuring them of necessary support. They alleged that for the first three hours of the attacks, there was no support from law enforcers and they acted as curious onlookers.
In Panchagarh town, the attackers also vandalised and torched shops of Ahmadiyya members, they said.
Ahmad Tabshir Chowdhury, the convener of the Jalsa Salana 2023 committee, said, “Ahmadi Muslims believe that Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is the promised Imam Mahdi and other Muslims await his arrival. This is the main difference between Ahmadis and non-Ahmadi Muslims. But it is spread in our name that we do not believe in Hazrat Muhammad (PBUH) as Khataman Nabiyyin. This is a completely false accusation against us. We respect Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa (PBUH) Khaman Nabiyyin in all the meanings of the word ‘Khatam’ in Arabic.”
“We are citizens of this country. Our constitution gives us the right to practice our religion freely. We hope that the government and administration will take maximum measures to protect and ensure our rights. At the same time, we call for establishing rule of law by taking appropriate legal action against the criminals and ensuring that such incidents do not recur in the future,” he said.
The Ahmadiyya community members, who gathered at Ahmadnagar village from across the country to attend their Jalsa Salana, were seen going back to their respective destinations on Saturday morning after the event was suspended for an indefinite period on Friday night.
Two men were killed and at least 50 people sustained injuries in the clash between a section of Muslim devotees and police demanding the closure of Ahmadiyya Jalsa Salana on Friday
After the Jummah prayers, devotees gathered from some mosques in the Panchagarh municipality area and started a protest march.
Then they went to Panchagarh town staging an agitation there. At one point they marched towards the jalsa venue in the Ahmadnagar village.
As police stopped the procession at Chowrangi intersection, the protesters became angry and started throwing brickbats at the police in the city’s cinema hall road area.
AFP adds: Hardline Islamist groups in Bangladesh, where Muslims account for around 90 per cent of the country’s 170 million people, have campaigned for more than a decade for the government to declare Ahmadiyyas as non-Muslims in style of Pakistan.
The Ahmadiyyas are an offshoot of the mainstream Sunni Muslim branch but are controversial because they believe their founder holds the status of a prophet.
The community has faced several attacks in recent decades. In 1999, a bomb ripped through an Ahmadiyya mosque in the southern city of Khulna, killing at least eight worshippers.
And in 2015 a suicide blast by a suspected extremist at an Ahmadiyya mosque in the northwestern town of Bagmara wounded three people.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, but the authorities blamed homegrown militant group Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), which is accused of killing scores of religious minorities including Hindus, Christians, Sufi Muslims and Shiites.
