The long distance passengers on Saturday experienced a traffic nightmare as the students of Jahangirnagar University blocked the Dhaka-Aricha highway protesting the killing of two fellow students in a road accident on Friday.
Vehicles got stuck on the Dhaka-Aricha highway, as the long gridlock that created in the morning intensified by yesterday noon.
Several hundred vehicles including buses, coaches, goods-laden trucks and covered vans were seen waiting on the highway for hours. Consequently, the long-distance passengers had to face untold sufferings.
On Friday Nazmul Hasan Rana, 24, a student of the Marketing Department and Mehedi Hasan Arafat, 24, a student of the Microbiology Department of JU were killed as a bus hit a human hauler on the Dhaka-Aricha highway in Savar.
On Saturday morning, students in large number started to gather on the Dhaka-Aricha highway at about 11.30am and staged demonstration.
Urging the authority concerned to construct three speed breakers in front of three gates the of university, the agitating students demanded exemplary punishment to the culprit driver within three days.
They also issued a 24-hour ultimatum to the university authority to compensate Tk 10 lakh each to the ill-fated students who met the tragic end of their lives. Otherwise, the students will go for tough movement.
JU Vice-Chancellor Professor Dr. Farzana Islam assured the students of accepting their demands and requested the students to return to the campus.
Meanwhile, when police tried to disperse the students from the highway, they became furious and locked in clash with the law enforcers.
Police swooped on the students and started clubbing them. Being beaten up, the students also pelted stones targeting the law enforcers.
Police also lobbed of tear shells and fired several rounds of rubber bullets to disperse the agitating students.
At one stage, activists of the JU unit of Bangladesh Chhatra League joined with the cops and launched attack on the agitating students injuring many of them.
The students later laid siege to the VC office protesting what they said ‘the police-BCL men joint action’.
A tense situation is prevailing on the JU campus till filling of this report on Saturday night. Additional cops have been deployed in and around the campus.
