Dhaka:
Hundreds of Bangladeshi students, brandishing bamboo sticks, patrolled the site of a planned rally of supporters of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Thursday, vowing to clamp down on any show of force.
Hasina, 76, fled by helicopter last week to neighboring India, where she remains, as student protests engulfed the streets of Dhaka, dramatically ending her 15-year iron-fisted rule.
Thursday is the anniversary of the 1975 assassination of her father, independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in a military coup – a date her government declared a national holiday.
In previous years, there have been large demonstrations in Bangladesh to mark the occasion, but the students who toppled Hasina were keen to ensure that supporters of her Awami League party were not given a chance to regroup.
“Awami League will try to create chaos on Thursday in the name of celebrating (the) mourning day,” prominent student leader Sarjis Alam told reporters the day before, according to the Daily Star newspaper.
“We will remain on the streets to resist such attempts.”
With no police in sight, hundreds of students patrolled the street Thursday leading to Hasina’s old family home, where her father and many of her relatives were gunned down nearly 50 years ago.
The monument was until recently a museum for her father, but was set on fire and destroyed by a gang hours after her fall.
In her first public statement since her abrupt departure, Hasina had this week asked her supporters to “pray for the salvation of all souls by offering garlands and praying” outside the monument.
Thousands of civil servants had to participate in public demonstrations to mark the death of her father during her time in office.
Awami League organizers would also set up temporary public address systems around Dhaka to air Mujib’s old speeches and devotional songs praising his leadership.
The interim government now ruling Bangladesh canceled celebrations of the politically charged holiday on Tuesday, forcing bureaucrats to remain in office.
And on Thursday, the dominant sound in the city of twenty million inhabitants was the horns and engines of perpetually gridlocked traffic.
‘Identified and punished’
Hasina’s statement came hours after a court in the capital opened a murder case against her, two senior Awami League allies and four police officers in connection with last month’s unrest.
Several other top Awami League politicians have also been detained in unrelated investigations, including former Justice Minister Anisul Huq and business adviser Salman Rahman.
Hasina’s statement also demanded an investigation into the violence during the unrest that forced her from office, with the perpetrators to be “identified and punished”.
Police weapons were to blame for the more than 450 people killed during the protests that ousted Hasina, according to police and hospital figures previously collected by AFP.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)