On Tuesday, a half-day strike was being carried out by a number of organisations to protest the hike in gas prices.
The protest was being observed peacefully until police were dispatched to break up the gathering. As the law enforcers dragged away a woman against her pleas of protest, a dog stepped up as the unlikely saviour.
The protester found herself supported by this stray dog, while no other human stepped forward.
The dog kept tugging at the woman’s clothes as police tried to pull her away from Shahbagh square.
It struggled valiantly, but its efforts were to no avail as police were finally able to separate the two and detain the woman, as a local news media outlet reports.
Dogs are often synonymous with law and order, so this particular dog’s stance against law enforcers raises a grim question – who is in the right?
The twofold gas price hike announced by Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission would have seen a Tk300 increase in household prices, until a High Court directive on Tuesday put a bar on the second increment in June.
The photo was taken by Rehman Asad, a photographer based in Dhaka whose work has been featured in BBC, the New York Times and The Guardian, among many other news outlets.