Angry locals torched nine buses after a Secondary School Certificate examinee was killed when he was run over by a bus from which he was thrown off by one of its staff on DIT Road at Rampura in Bangladesh capital Dhaka Monday night, allegedly after an altercation over bus fare.
The boy, Mainul Hossain, 16, appeared in SSC examination from Ekramunnesa Boys’ High School at Rampura in Dhaka this year, the police said.
This is the second death of a student in five days in Dhaka. Notre Dame College student Nayeem Hasan was killed in an accident at capital’s Gulistan on November 24.
The news of the death of Mainul came when students in Dhaka and elsewhere in Bangladesh have been demonstrating demanding safe roads and half fare in all public transports. Nayeem’s death fuelled the students’ protests.
Witnesses alleged that Mainul was thrown off a bus of Anabil Paribahan and was run over by it.
Rampura police station sub-inspector Tapos Ghoshal said that the SSC examinee was killed on the spot as he was run over by a bus of Anabil Pariban on DIT Road at Rampura at about 10:45pm on Monday.
The police station’s officer-in-charge Rafiqul Islam said that the locals rushed to the spot immediately after the SSC examinee’s death, caught the bus driver and handed him over to police.
He said that the angry locals then blocked the road and torched a few buses.
Fire Service and Civil Defence headquarters’ control room duty officer Ershad Hossain at about 12:30am on Tuesday said that the angry locals burnt seven buses and four fire fighting units doused the fire within one and a half hours.
‘We have seized the bus and arrested the driver. We are investigating into the matter and looking whether the boy was thrown off the bus,’ said Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Matijheel division deputy commissioner Abdul Ahad while talking to reporters on the spot at about 12:45am on Tuesday.
