Sixteen second time Dhaka University (DU) admission seekers are behind bars in a “false” case for vandalising different establishments of the university on December 21.
Students, teachers and security guards of the university said the protesters had not been involved in vandalism on the campus.
On October 14, just after the 2014-15 admission test, the authorities decided to allow only freshly passed HSC students to appear in its admission tests from the 2015-16 academic sessions.
Some students, who attended this year admission test of the university, started staging demonstrations demanding a reversal of the decision.
They staged a hunger strike, held rallies, and submitted a memorandum to President Md Abdul Hamid, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Vice Chancellor AASM AAMS Arefin Siddique.
Despite repeated assaults by police they continued their programmes from October 17.
On December 21, several students gathered in front of Raju Sculpture on the campus before going to meet the vice chancellor as part of their schedule around 10am.
Shahbagh police, led by Proctor Amjad Ali, arrested eight of them from the altar of Raju Sculpture and four from the TSC area and seven from Suhrawardi Uddyan. They later released three, detaining 16 others.
Around 12.30 pm, some left-leaning student organisations took out a rally under the “Pragatishil Chhatra Jote” demanding release of the detained students and withdrawal of police from the campus immediately.
DU Chief Security Officer SM Kamrul Ahsan filed the case with the Shahbagh police station in the name of university.
According to the first information report, “...outsiders in the name of students illegally gathered at the TSC and Dhaka university administrative building areas with sticks, brick chips and vandalised the main gate of the administrative building and one collapsible gate by knocking and hitting at it. They also vandalised different establishments of the university by throwing brick chips. Thus they caused an extensive damage of around Tk5 lakh.”
Dhaka University student Anup Kormokar, who was present at TSC area on December 21, told the Dhaka Tribune: “Over 100 police men were deployed at TSC area on that day. They arrested the students after the latter came in to gather there.”
“They even did not go to the administrative building area. So how could they vandalise there?,” he said.
Abdur Rahman, the security guard of the vice chancellor office gate, told the Dhaka Tribune: “Around 1pm, some students came here with a rally while chanting slogans to meet the vice chancellor. We locked the gate as directed by the authority.”
“I did not see any sticks in their hands. They also did not throw any brick chips. They only broke the lock of the collapsible gate to storm into the building.”
When this reporter wanted to see the lock, another security guard named Dilip Chandra Sarker came up with the lock, but when he tried to show it broken, I saw it had not been broken at all.
Expressing surprise at such discovery, he said: “We thought it had got damaged.”
When Chief Security Officer Kamrul was asked to specify the university installations allegedly damaged by the arrested students, he began to stammer saying only: “There is, there is,” but could not say what had been vandalised.
He then advised the reporter to talk to the proctor about this saying: ““I wrote the FIR as ordered by the proctor at his office. Ask him where vandalism took place on the campus.”
Moshahida Sultana, assistant professor of the Department of Accounting and Information Systems of the university told the Dhaka Tribune, “The arrested students did not carry out any act of vandalism and so the authority could not show any proof against them. This is just a false case.”
“They should be allowed to sit for the admission tests next year too because they were not notified by the university about its decision beforehand.”
When proctor Amjad Ali was contacted, he said he could not talk about it until Sunday. He also said this case was not filed by any order from his office.