Eleven people sustained injuries following a violent clash between two opposing factions of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in Jamalpur’s Sarishabari upazila, triggered by a dispute over territorial dominance and illegal sand extraction. The confrontation erupted late at night in the Kawamara Bottola area of Pingna union, turning a local resource dispute into a street battle.
The violence left several individuals severely wounded. Among the injured are Masud Mia, Chan Mia, Dr Mazharul Islam Mukul, Anisur Rahman Anis, Babu Mia, Humayun Kabir, Subhash Sarkar, Bayezid, Samal Mia, Shiblu Mia, and former union parishad member Saiful Islam. Given the severity of their wounds, medical personnel transferred the most critical casualties to Jamalpur General Hospital and Mymensingh Medical College Hospital for advanced medical treatment.
Local residents explained that the underlying tension stemmed from unauthorised commercial sand dredging. For an extended period, mobile bulkheads and dredgers have been utilised to harvest and sell sand from the char areas along the Jamuna River in the Rospal mouza. Local farmers and senior BNP figures repeatedly warned that this unchecked extraction posed a severe threat to agricultural lands and local ecology, but these warnings were largely ignored.
The confrontation boiled over when local farmers and rival party members intercepted and seized an active sand-carrying bulkhead. Within hours of the seizure, a group of twenty-5 to thirty individuals arriving on roughly fifteen motorcycles descended upon the Kawamara Bottola area under the leadership of local Chhatra Dal leader Subhash Sarkar. Witnesses reported that the armed group carried indigenous weapons such as machetes and iron pipes, with locals alleging that a blank shot was fired to sow panic before a brutal physical assault ensued.
The local backlash continued into the following afternoon when three associates of Sarkar returned in an attempt to retrieve the seized bulkhead. Enraged residents apprehended the trio and promptly handed them over to the custody of responding police officers. Shamim Mia, a local member of Krishak Dal, condemned the violence, stating that Sarkar had been aggressively mining sand through intimidation and demanding his immediate arrest and prosecution for the armed assault.
Rejecting the allegations levelled against him, Subhash Sarkar offered a starkly different account of the incident. He claimed that the detained bulkhead did not belong to him, but rather to an individual named Sohag from Sarishabari, who had allegedly requested his assistance in recovering the vessel. Sarkar asserted that his group was ambushed by the opposing faction the moment they arrived at the location, reversing the narrative of aggression.
Mohammad Iqbal Hossain, the officer-in-charge of Sarishabari police station, confirmed that law enforcement units rushed to the scene upon receiving reports of the clash and successfully brought the situation under control. Police officials noted that they had no formal confirmation regarding the reported gunfire and confirmed that no formal written complaints had been lodged by either party at the time, adding that legal action would follow once an official grievance is filed.
