Violence continued unabated in Bangladesh on Tuesday as 28 people were killed in clashes between marauding members of a radical Islamist outfit and the police.
“The miscreants torched five compartments of the Subarna Express, two of the compartments were badly burnt...This is a clear case of sabotage,” railway official Mia Jahan said.
He said that nobody was hurt as the miscreants set ablaze the “elite train” before dawn while it was stationed in Chittagong. Police said that they have started to investigate the sabotage which came after violence erupted over Chittagong-based Hefazat-e-Islam’s ‘Dhaka siege’ programme.
Seven people, including an army soldier, were killed late on Monday at Hathazari area on the outskirts of the port city. Top Hefazat leader, demanding a tougher blasphemy law in Bangladesh, was remanded in police custody on Tuesday in connection with the raging violence.
The Hefazat-e-Islam or ‘Protectorate of Islam’ unleashed riots on Dhaka streets to mount pressure on the secular Awami league-led Government to implement its 13-point demand, including the enactment of a blasphemy law to punish those who insult Islam and its Prophet.
The law enforcement agencies eventually dispersed the protesters from the capital. Media reports said most of those killed were Hefazat activists.
The Opposition calls on for two consecutive days of nation-wide strike from Wednesday, what they said were ‘atrocities’ on Hefazat activists, comprising mainly of unregistered madrasah students.
Hefazat Cultural Secretary Ashraf Ali Nizampuri said his outfit was extending support to the May 8, 9 nation-wide shutdown.
He also warned that Hefazat would start a tougher agitation programmes if its leaders and activists are not freed by May 12.
Earlier in the day, a Dhaka court sent Hifazat Secretary General Junaid Babu Nagari on a 10-day police remand in connection with a case filed over violence unleashed by the conservative outfit on Sunday.
Babunagari was arrested on Monday after Hefazat’s veteran supremo Allama Ahmad Shafi was sent back to his hometown Chittagong. Officials, however, confirmed 21 deaths on May 5 and 6 saying six of them were members of the armed or law enforcement forces while all the victims died in the capital and its outskirts and Hathazari of the port city of Chittagong where the clashes spread.
“The exact death toll is 21,” Home Minister Mahiuddi Khan Alamgir said when approached for comments about the number of people killed in the clashes. PTI