At least 50 people were injured as a motorcade of the Anti-discrimination Students Movement and Jatiya Nagorik Committee allegedly came under attack in Madrasahar Hat area at Mollahat in Bagerhat Tuesday morning.
Student leaders alleged that the incident took place at about 11:30pm when Awami League activists attacked the students’ motorcade that was marching towards Dhaka from Khulna and Satkhira districts to join ‘March for Unity’ at the Central Shaheed Minar in the capital.
The Anti-discrimination Students Movement and the Jatiya Nagorik Committee, two platforms of the anti-discrimination activists, organised the ‘March for Unity’ programme.
During the Mollahat incident, the vehicular movement remained halted for about two hours on the Khulna-Dhaka highway.
‘About 50 students were injured in the attack. Of them, five were critically injured,’ Jatiya Nagorik Committee spokesperson Samantha Sharmin told ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ·.
Anti-discrimination Students Movement coordinator Abdullah Shaleheen Oyon alleged that AL cadres attacked the students in a planned way.
The platform’s Khulna division representative, Bishowjit Dutta, said that about 25 buses carrying students under the banners of their platform and Nagorik Committe were coming to Dhaka to join the Shaheed Minar programme from Satkhira and Khulna.
‘The attack was launched on the last 10 buses coming from Khulna,’ said Bishowjit.
He said that buses were stuck there for more than two hours and Bangladesh Army members rescued the students.
Mollahat Police Station officer-in-charge Shafiqul Islam, however, claimed that the students locked into a clash with a local bus counter workers and then local people also joined the clash.
‘Several people were injured in the clash. We are yet to find out the exact number. We reached the spot at first and then Bangladesh Army members also came to bring the situation under control,’ he added.
Bagherhat district superintendent of police Md Towhidul Arif said that it was not a political clash.
‘Students locked into clashes with the local people, as a bus was running at high speed and it was not giving space to a passenger bus,’ Towhidul added.