The students of North South University on Saturday protested against the death of their fellow in a ‘hit-and-run’ incident in the capital.
Terming the death as murder, they demanded an immediate trial for the people responsible and Tk 1 crore in compensation for the family of the deceased.
The police arrested the covered van driver and another one from Chattogram on Friday night in connection with the incident.
The driver, Saiful Islam, had a licence to drive light vehicles but not heavy vehicles like the van involved in the incident.
Maisha Momotaz Meem, a sixth-semester student of English at North South University, was coming to the university on a scooter from Uttara on Friday morning.
Khilkhet police station officer-in-charge Munshi Sabbir Ahmed told New Age that the covered van hit her scooter on the Khilkhet flyover, leaving her falling to the ground.
Some pedestrians found Maisha lying on the flyover and rushed her to the Kurmitola General Hospital, where she was declared dead.
Demanding justice for Maisha, some NSU students started a procession on their campus on Saturday morning with placards on their hands. They were chanting slogans like – ‘we demand justice’, ‘we demand safe road’ and ‘today is Maisha tomorrow is who.’
After some time they came to the gate of the Bashundhara residential area and held a sit-in protest there for around an hour.
They also demanded capital punishment for the responsible people if anyone died in a road accident, installation of CCTVs on all roads to prevent overtaking, half passes without any condition, separate public transport for students, separate buses for women and immediate implementation of bus route rationalisation project.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police Cantonment zone additional deputy commissioner Iftekhairul Islam told New Age that van driver Saiful Islam, 44, and Moshiur, a representative of the owner of the goods in the van, were arrested from Chattogram on Friday night.
Saiful had a light vehicle driving licence while he was driving a heavy vehicle, he said.
Road safety protests saw a revival in 2021 after Notre Dame College student Nayeem Hasan was hit and killed by a Dhaka South City Corporation dustcart in the capital’s Gulistan on November 24, 2021.
Protests also sparked in the capital’s Rampura after Mainuddin Islam, a Secondary School Certificate examinee of Ekramunnesa Boys High School in the area, was crushed to death by a bus of Anabil Paribahan on November 29, 2021.
In 2018, thousands of students took to the streets for days after two Shaheed Ramiz Uddin Cantonment College students were killed when a reckless driver drove a Jabal-e-Noor company bus off the road and ploughed through a crowd during a race to overtake another bus of the same company at Kurmitola in Dhaka on July 29.
– With New Age input
