DHAKA, 1 September 2006 — Clashes erupted between police and protesters during a strike called by the opposition parties in Dhaka yesterday. A police officer was killed and 20 others were injured during the violent protest, sources said. Normal life was also disrupted due to strike.

The officer was hit in the head with a piece of brick and later died of heart failure in a hospital, Home Affairs Minister Lutfozzaman Babar told reporters at the Heart Foundation Hospital.

At least 20 other people were injured. Police arrested about eight protesters during the clash in Dhaka’s northern Mirpur district.

An alliance of 14 opposition parties, led by the Awami League, called the nationwide strike to protest the weekend killing by police of six people demonstrating against a proposed coal mine by a British firm in northern Bangladesh.

In Dhaka, the city of 10 million people, the strike closed down schools and shops and disrupted traffic.

Opposition supporters also damaged several vehicles, including a minister’s car in the city’s posh Dhanmondi district.

The strike was also supported by a leftist group, the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Power, Port and Mineral Resources, which has been staging violent protests to demand that the government scrap a deal that permits London-based Asia Energy PLC to mine for coal in the Phulbari area of northern Dinajpur district.

The committee says the mine’s development would displace more than 40,000 villagers and damage the environment in Dinajpur, a farming district 270 km north of Dhaka.

On Saturday, security forces fatally shot six people who were among thousands of protesters trying to take over the company’s office in the area. Over the following two days, demonstrators blocked roads and rail tracks, ransacked a company office, and set fire to at least seven homes and stores belonging to Asia Energy employees.

The violence prompted Asia Energy to temporarily withdraw its personnel from the area, company spokesman Shamsur Rahman said. Asia Energy plans to invest $2.5 billion to develop an open-pit coal mine. Since submitting a joint feasibility study and proposal in October, the company has been awaiting government approval to start mining operations.

In another unrelated development, a Bangladesh court yesterday overturned the sentence of a man who was convicted of murder and condemned to death, lawyers said.

Delivering its verdict in the appeal of Shah Alam Babu, the High Court also ordered the trial judge in the case to be stripped of his judicial powers.

“The judges said in their verdict that the lower court judge did not apply his judicial mind and lacked fundamental knowledge of the criminal justice system,” said defense lawyer Elina Khan.

“They also asked the police department to take action against the investigating officer for wrongfully charging Shah Alam Babu and setting up the case against him,” she added.

Lawyers for the man told the court that officers began to harass him in 2003 claiming that he was in fact Sundar Babu, one of the accused in the 1998 shooting of a man in the capital Dhaka.

He later surrendered to police and was tried and condemned to death on August 18, 2004, despite repeated statements by witnesses, including the murdered man’s widow, that the man in the dock was not the man named in the indictment.

“I told the judge that they were sentencing an innocent man to death while the real killer of my husband was roaming freely in the city,” the widow, Rokeya, told AFP earlier.

The High Court verdict, delivered on Tuesday, also ordered the immediate arrest and trial of the original suspect.

Bangladeshi police and court officials are routinely criticized by rights groups who claim the officials are so poorly paid that bribes and sloppy case work are common.