At least 12 Northern University Bangladesh’s Karwan Bazar branch students were injured yesterday, when a group of 40-50 people from Estate Developers Bangladesh (EDB) attacked them after an altercation over the grabbing of some floors of the building.
Of the injured, the university’s law department students Polash and Sourav were admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of Dhaka Medical College Hospital. Four others – Riazuddin Adnan, Helal Mahmood, Shakib and Selim – were also sent to DMCH. Three other injured were under treatment at a private hospital, police said.
The clash took place after some men from the EDB attacked some students when the men were trying to grab the EDB Trade Centre’s [where the university is housed] 13th and 15th floor around 11am.
Mazharul Islam, officer-in-charge of Tejgaon police station, said the NUB authorities had a feud with the EDB authorities over who owned the floors.
NUB canteen employee Fazlur Rahman said around 9:30am about 7-8 people went to the university and asked him to open the locks of the two floors. When he asked them for their identities, they beat him up, Fazlur alleged.
“After half an hour, they brought grill cutters and broke the locks. Around 11am on receiving information that the university was under attack, some students went there and engaged in an altercation with them,” he said.
A witness, law department student Adnan Hossain, said around 40-50 men attacked them with lethal weapons when they were on the 12th floor canteen.
“They had machetes, knives, iron rods and cricket stumps with them,” he said.
When contacted, NUB Registrar Lt Col (retd) Ekhtedar Ahmed Siddique said they had bought some floors from the EDB, but the real estate company had resold those floors.
“Today [yesterday] they came to grab a couple of floors. They vandalised the canteen on the 13th floor and the exam halls on the 14th and the ground floors, when we protested,” he claimed.
He also claimed that the NUB authorities had bought a total of 10 floors from the EDB, which they did not hand over. The university authority had lodged cases that are under trial.
Following the clash, police picked up EDB Managing Director Fazlul Bari with 23 of the alleged attackers.