Students end Dhaka blockade, streets cleared

Students have gone back home for today after hours of blocking several key points in Dhaka demanding safe roads after two students were killed due to reckless driving last Sunday.

It was the third straight day that the students have taken to the streets after death of two students of Shaheed Ramiz Uddin Cantonment College last Sunday – vandalising and torching buses at some points.

Last reported around 3:00pm, blockades at Farmgate, Motijheel, Tejgaon, Mirpur Road, and Mirpur were clearing after the students withdrew. A block was persisting in Uttara.

Hundreds of students of Government Science College and Tejgaon Government Boys High School blockaded the key Farmgate intersection for two hours starting from 11:00am.

Tejgaon Police Station Officer-in-Charge Mazharul Islam said that the students were demonstrating for demands of safe roads in Dhaka city.

Students from City College, Ideal College, and others took position on Science Lab intersection blocking the key Mirpur Road for about two hours starting from 11:45pm. One bus of Himachal Paribahan was torched at scene and another bus vandalised.

At Mirpur, students blocked Sony Cinema Hall intersection for about half an hour, said Masud Ahmed, deputy commissioner (Mirpur Zone) of Dhaka police.

The Mirpur 10 and Mirpur 1 intersections were also blockaded for an hour starting from 10:00am, said Dadan Fakir, officer-in-charge of Mirpur Police Station.

Also, on Mirpur Road, students of Sher-e-Bangla Boys High School and Colony High School put up a blockade at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar around 1:00pm.

Notre Dame College students took Motijheel’sShapla Intersection for two hours and withdrew around 3:00pm, said Omar Faruk, officer-in-charge of Motijheel Police Station.

At Nabisco intersection, Tejgaon, students blockaded the road for about half an hour starting from 12:30pm, said Sub-Inspector Rezaulislam of Tejgaon Industrial Police Station.

Uttara Police Station sources said, a mob was still persisting on the Airport Road around 3:00pm. Police were trying to disperse the crowd.

Dia Khanam Mim and Abdul Karim Rajib were as a Jabal-e-Noor bus ploughed through a crowd, while competing with another bus of the same company, on Airport Road last Sunday – in yet another glaring example of Dhaka’s unruly transport sector.

Aggrieved students went on rampage immediately, vandalising whatever buses they found before them. The agitation carried on for the whole day yesterday.

The intense agitation has pressured the government much; leading to the arrests of two bus drivers and two helpers today, who they said were involved with the reckless driving.

Source: thedailystar