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Information and broadcasting adviser Md Nahid Islam on Saturday said that an impression was pervasive in society that justice was impossible when someone powerful was involved in a road crash.

Citing the very recent fatal road accident involving three students of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, he said, ‘there is a common notion that if the people who are involved in road crashes come from the upper echelon of society cannot be held accountable.’

‘The common people are the worst sufferers of road crashes,’ he added.

‘Whoever involved in the road crashes must be brought to justice,’ he stressed.

Nahid’s remarks came when he spoke as the chief guest at a national dialogue titled ‘Reforms of institutional management and structure with an aim to establish order in the road transport sector’.

Protests erupted at the BUET after one of its students was killed and two other students were injured after a car hit them in the early hours of Friday.

Police found a can of beer and an empty alcohol bottle inside the car that was being driven by a former army officer’s son.

The dialogue on Saturday was organised by Road Safety Foundation at the Press Institute of Bangladesh.  

Saying that the immediate past Awami League regime preached a false development narrative centred on infrastructural development in its 15-year rule, Nahid stated, ‘We need more people-centric development policy.’  

He also alleged that road crash deaths were institutional killings as they happened due to institutional weaknesses.

‘The transport sector is infested with multi-dimensional problems, including corruption, politicisation, lack of education and public awareness, unskilled workforce, tendency of violation of laws, and lack of implementation of law,’ he said.

Bangladesh Road Transport Authority chairman Md Yeasin, Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation chairman Md Tajul Islam, Dhaka Transport Coordination Authority executive director Neelima Akhter, and Press Institute Bangladesh director general Faruk Wasif, among others, joined the event.