More than 500 people loyal to a faction of Islamic ideological movement Tabligh Jamaat have demonstrated outside the Dhaka airport, crippling traffic in the northern part of the city.
Published : 10 Jan 2018, 03:00 PM
Police said the demonstrators were protesting against the arrival of the organisation’s supreme council member Saad Kandhalvi from India.
“The Tabligh Jamaat is split over Saad Kandhalvi’s leadership. A faction is opposing his arrival,” Airport Police OC Noor-a-Azam told bdnews24.com.
Protests started around 9am, before Kandhalvi’s arrival in Dhaka.
He arrived in Dhaka in the afternoon, but the demonstrators were still protesting outside the airport.
Kandhalvi left the airport and went to Kakrail Mosque, the centre of Tabligh’s activities in Bangladesh, around 3:30pm.
After the Asr prayers, the demonstrators left the Airport Road and gathered in front of Kakrail Mosque.
Police dispersed them and beefed up security around the mosque. No one was allowed to enter it in the evening.
Residents of the airport area said the protesters gathered in front of a local mosque in the morning and their demonstrations hampered traffic on the road.
Police intervened but the demonstration disrupted traffic on one of the busiest roads in the city, which leads to some national highways.
The traffic tailback later spanned beyond Tongi Bazar and extended to the National University.
In Dhaka, the residents of Uttara suffered the most from the traffic congestion created by the Tabligh Jamaat protests.
The gridlock spread to all the roads and arteries in the residential area. Many had to return home after failing to even take their cars out of the garage.
Laila Aziz, a retired teacher residing in Uttara Sector 5, said she was to take a relative to a doctor at noon. “But I’ve missed the appointment because of the jam,” she said.
Farzana Chowdhury, a housewife from the same locality, said she always does her kitchen market shopping on Wednesday as the roads get almost empty on this weekly holiday for the shopping complexes in the area.
“But I had to walk two and a half kilometres carrying two bags to return home today,” she said.
Fazlur Rahman, an executive with a private firm, told bdnews24.com around 2:30pm that he had been stranded there for two hours.
Naila Chowdhury, the managing director of a private firm, started for her office in Banani around 11:45am, but returned home at Uttara Sector 3 after getting stuck in the heavy traffic for an hour.
Shaila Monaem, an expatriate living in Australia, has come to Bangladesh and is now staying with her sister in Uttara Sector 14.
She wanted to take her daughter to Gulshan but had to return home after waiting in the car in front their home for 40 minutes.
Later they reached Gulshan via Ashulia, Mirpur and Shyamoli.
Kandhalvi has recently announced himself as the chief of the body, which created a rift among the senior members of the Tabligh Jamaat’s Bangladesh chapter.
In November, a scuffle broke out between two groups on the premises of Dhaka’s Kakrail Mosque, the headquarters of Tabligh Jamaat’s Bangladesh chapter.
In an effort to avoid such untoward incidents in future, an advisory council was formed.
“Protests are being held across the country over his arrival,” the organisation’s member Abdul Quddus told bdnews24.com.