At least 20 people were injured as cricket fans clashed with police in front of a bank in the capital yesterday over the sale of tickets for the Asia Cup 2016 final match.
The match, between Bangladesh and India, will take place today.
Police said the ticket seekers started queuing up in front of the Mirpur 10 branch of United Commercial Bank Ltd (UCB) since early morning. They started getting agitated when a rumour about all the tickets being sold out began circulating in the area around 12pm.
The ticket seekers started demonstrating in front of the bank when police rushed to spot receiving information and tried to disperse the crowd.
But then the ticket seekers went on a rampage, police said.
“They started hurling brickbats at the bank’s building and vandalising vehicles on the street. At one stage, police charged baton on them to control the situation,” said Bhuiyan Mahbub Hossain, OC of Mirpur police station, yesterday evening.
Witnesses said police also lobbed tear gas cannisters and fired rubber bullets at the vandals to bring the situation under the control.
This led to several episodes of clashes between the ticket seekers which spanned over around five hours, they added.
Some police officials were also injured in the clashes. Police arrested eight people from the spot, sources said.
The ticket sale began around 10am at the bank but had to be suspended for a while when the clashes broke out, said Javed Iqbal, public relations officer of UCB.
“When the situation calmed down a little, we resumed the sales around 3pm. It was finished around 4:30pm,” he told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday evening on phone.
In reply to a question, OC Mahbub said police were not contacted by any officials of Bangladesh Cricket Board until 5pm last evening. “We are trying to contact them about this matter,” he said.
The cricket fans have been raising allegations of irregularities in the sales of Asia Cup matches.
They claimed that black market agents, mostly children and women, stood in queue with regular people to collect the tickets. They claimed some police members were involved with the black market agents too.
The fans further said tickets priced at Tk150 were being sold for Tk3,000 and tickets priced at Tk200 were being sold for Tk4,000 in the black market.