At least 15 students of Rajshahi University of Engineering and Technology were injured in an attack carried out by some local people over a trivial matter in the Bhadra area in Rajshahi city on Monday.
Among the injured students, three – Md Shuvo, Md Shakib, and Milon Reza of mechanical engineering department– were undergoing treatment at Rajshahi Medical College Hospital.
Shuvo alleged that he along with another fellow student Rocky went to buy some essential commodities at Hajar Mor in the Bhadra area on Monday night.
He said that they gave shopkeeper Shahabuddin a banknote of Tk 500 but the latter failed to give them change.
‘When we wanted to pay the shopkeeper the money later after having a change from another shopkeeper as we had to buy other necessary things, the latter locked into an altercation with us,’ he added, alleging that several local people then joined the shopkeeper in the altercation.
At one stage, Shuvo continued, the shopkeeper and the local people attacked and beat them with sticks.
Wahedul Islam, a professor of the RUET mechanical engineering department who rushed to the spot on information, said that the local people also beat the students in front of them when they went to resolve the issue, leaving 15 students injured.
Later, members of the army and the police rushed to the spot and brought the situation under control.
Protesting at the attack on their fellows, meanwhile, RUET students boycotted classes and examinations on Tuesday and staged demonstrations by blocking the Rajshahi-Dhaka highway in the Bhadra Crossing area at about
1:00pm.
During their half an hour blockade, the students placed their five-point demands including immediate arrest of those who attacked their fellow students on Monday night and ensuring security of the students residing at different rented houses and hostels adjacent to the university campus.
Associate professor Md Abdullah Al Mahmood, deputy director of RUET Students’ Welfare, told New Age that they lodged a written complaint with the Boalia police station against five named and fifty unnamed local people for attacking their students.
Matiar Rahman, officer-in-charge of the Chandrima police station, told New Age that the written complaint lodged by the RUET administration had been recorded as a case and had already arrested two named accused.
source: NEW AGE