Engineering students demand apology from home advisor, announce sit-in at Shahbagh

The protesters allege a “police attack” on their ongoing movement

Protesting engineering students have called for an apology from Home Advisor Jahangir Alam Chowdhury and raised five demands, alleging a police attack on them.

They have also announced the continuation of their sit-in at Shahbagh.

Rejecting the government-formed panel to assess the “reasonableness” of the demands of BSc and diploma engineers, they also demanded the treatment for the students “injured in police attacks”, bringing police members responsible for the attack to justice and dismissing them from service, as well as ensuring safety for the students.

Jubayer Ahmed, a civil engineering student at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), announced the development at a briefing held outside the InterContinental Dhaka in the capital at 5:30pm on Wednesday.

Earlier, on Tuesday, after blocking the Shahbagh intersection for five hours from afternoon until 8pm, they left the street announcing a programme titled “Long March to Dhaka”.

As part of the programme, at around 11am on Wednesday, engineering students from BUET and other universities staged a sit-in at Shahbagh for the second day, bringing vehicular movement on this key road and neighbourhoods to a halt.

Later, around 1:30pm, as they brought out a procession towards the chief advisor’s residence, the State Guest House Jamuna, police dispersed them by firing sound grenades and teargas shells, triggering running battles and scuffles between the students and law enforcers.

Jubayer claimed that up to 60 students had been injured in the incident.