The New Nation - Internet Edition

UNB, Faridpur

Two "notorious terrors" condemned for the killing of a journalist and a student leader were killed in an encounter with tough-going RAB crime-combatants in the town early

yesterday.

The deceased were identified as Babu Kosai, 40, and Sabbir Hossain Jahangir alias Golakata Jahangir, 38, both residents of this district headquarters.

They were both condemned to death in separate cases of murder of Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal leader Firoj Ahmed of Alipur village and journalist

Badal in the town respectively, official sources said.

Both were fugitives and warranted by police.

Later, the High Court commuted their capital punishment into life-term imprisonment following separate appeals.

Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) sources said a team of RAB-8 moved on information that two groups of terrorists were in a clandestine meeting inside the abandoned Khanpur Textile Mill on the outskirts of the town at about 3am.

"Sensing the presence of the elite force, the miscreants opened fire, forcing them to fire back, which triggered a 20-minute gunfight," says a RAB account of the shootout.

Amid the late-night fighting, a team of army-led joint forces surrounded the area and later recovered the bullet-riddled bodies of the two fugitives from the mill. Their cohorts fled the scene.

Three firearms and bullets left behind by the terrors were retrieved from the spot after the gunfight.

The bodies were handed over to their guardians at noon after the postmortem done at Faridpur Medical College Hospital. After namaj-e-janaza, they were buried at Alipur graveyard in the town.

Babu, whose cadres had launched a gun-and-bomb attack on journalist Prabir Sikder on April 20, 2001, was wanted in eight criminal cases while Jahangir was sued in five cases, police said.

The ringleaders tried to reorganize their 'bahini's (gangs) after they came out from their longtime hideouts.

So far, six notorious terrors on police list have been killed in such crossfire during encounters with law-enforcers in the district alone.