A member of the Rapid Action Battalion was stabbed to death by a suspected mugger during a police operation in Sylhet city on Friday noon.

Deceased Emon Acharya, 28, was a member of the RAB-9 unit, who hailed from Hathazari upazila in Chattogram, the police said.

Sylhet Metropolitan Police additional deputy commissioner (media) Md Manjurul Alam confirmed the death of the RAB member. He told New Age that the killer was nabbed immediately after the incident.

The arrested was identified as Asadul Alam Bappi, 22, son of Abul Hossain of Mogaltula at Kazirbazar under the Kotwali police station in Sylhet city, the SMP ADC said. 

A team of the Kotwali police was chasing several muggers in the city’s Keane Bridge area at around the noon, said the SMP officer.

‘At that time, RAB member Emon, who was in plain clothes, caught the suspected mugger Bappi while he was running away. But Bappi immediately stabbed Emon at the left side of his chest with a knife and fled the scene, leaving him critically injured,’ the police officer said.

He said that the injured RAB man was rushed to the Sylhet Osmani Medical College Hospital and was admitted to the intensive care unit where he died at around 1:30pm due to excessive bleeding.

The SMP officer said that the police still continued to chase the attacker even after the stabbing and cordoned him when he got inside a house at Topkhana beside the Kotwali police station.

Bappi, he said, held hostage a children of that house and tried to escape again.

‘He (suspected mugger) held the knife at the throat of the child and threatened the police that he would kill the child if they moved towards him. But the police team managed to get hold of his knife and subdued him,’ said the police officer in the afternoon, adding that the arrested was under their custody.

He also said that the body of the RAB man was kept in the SOMCH mortuary for autopsy.

Talking to New Age, the RAB-9 media officer, additional police superintendent KM Shahidul Islam Sohag, said that RAB man Emon had gone to the spot for personal purposes and he was in plain clothes when the police operation was under way.

‘His relatives were informed of what happened to Emon over phone and they were coming from Chattogram,’ he further said in the afternoon, adding that preparations were under way to file a murder case with the police.