DHAKA, 29 May 2005 — Angry students went on the rampage and clashed with police in Dhaka University campus here yesterday after a woman student was killed in a bus accident.
Angry students set fire to the bus and damaged dozens of other motor vehicles at Shahbagh crossing in the university area where the accident took place.
The protesters battled police who lobbed teargas shells and also baton charged them. The students pelted the police with stones.
At least 100 people, mostly university students, were injured in the clash. About a dozen of those were police officers, said Mazharul Haque, a senior police official.
Shammi Akhter, a third year student of the university’s Psychology Department, was killed when a bus hit the rickshaw carrying her at Shahbagh crossing. She was a resident student of Rokeya Hall of the university. Two of her relatives traveling with her were badly injured, police said.
The angry students staged demonstrations protesting Shammi’s death. “The protesters seized and set ablaze the bus that killed Shammi, and smashed about a dozen other buses and cars. They also threw stones at police who responded with batons, rubber bullets and tear gas,” Haque said.
“We had no other option, but to charge with batons and use gas shells,” he said.
Police contingents and the elite force of the rapid action battalion were deployed on the campus. Shahbagh area virtually turned into a battlefield with the protesters blocking all adjoining roads.
Meanwhile, officials yesterday said a heat wave which has sent temperatures soaring this week was responsible for the deaths of at least six people. The dead were mostly farm laborers working long hours on rice plains under the summer sun, public health officials said.
The highest number of deaths due to sunstroke occurred in the southern Satkhira district, about 320 km south of Dhaka, where temperatures as high as 38.9 degrees Celsius were recorded.
Three laborers died on the fields Friday while they were planting rice seedlings in Satkhira, while two more sunstroke deaths were reported from the border district of Jessore. Another death due to heat-related causes happened in the Tangail district.
