Suspected militant killed in custody in Bangladesh

Teenager killed a day after he allegedly hacked a Hindu lecturer.

DHAKA: A teenage suspected militant being held in custody in Bangladesh was shot dead Saturday in a gunfight, police said, days after he allegedly hacked and critically wounded a Hindu lecturer.

Police said Golam Faizullah Fahim, a 19-year-old Muslim, who was in custody for questioning, was killed when officers came under attack in a farmland area after taking him to a river in search of his associates.

“Miscreants fired at the police van as we came near a jute farm. A gunfight ensued. After the gunfight we saw Fahim was shot and wounded. He died after we brought him to a hospital,” Sarwar Hossain, police chief of Madaripur, where the shooting took place, said.

Locals in Madaripur caught Fahim on Wednesday after he and two other suspected militants attacked and wounded 50-year-old mathematics lecturer Ripon Chakrabarti, a Hindu, police said.

The attack was the latest in a wave of brutal assaults on secular activists, writers and religious minorities by suspected Islamist militants.

Police later told reporters Fahim was a college student and was a member of banned Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation) is an international militant group outlawed in several countries, including Bangladesh.