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Saber falls unconscious as over 100 hurt in cop beating

AL MP Ahsanullah Master receives stitches for head injury

Staff Correspondent
Former minister Saber Hossain Chowdhury and Awami League MP Ahsanullah Master sustained critical head wounds when police charged baton to disperse a prohartal procession near Dainik Bangla crossing in the city yesterday during the dawn-to-dusk counlywide hartal.
Demonstrations by pro-hartal pickets during the shutdown escalated into pitched battles with police across the capital, leaving another 100 injured. Besides, at least 13 people were wounded elsewhere.
Police picked up at least 94 dehi-onstrators from the capital during the hartal hours that include AL’s Relief and Social Welfare Secretary Nazma Rahman and Habibur Rahman Mollah.
Tlie’ main opposition party enforced* the 12-hour shutdown to hammer its one-point demand for tlw gpverftment to step aside, bringing life and business in the city and elsewhere to a grinding halt.
Shops, schools, business centres and private offices remained closed and automobiles went off the road responding to the shutdown. Attendance in government offices was thin and although commercial banks were open, transaction was low.
Witnesses said the law enforcers in riot gear attacked without provocation the procession led by Saber and Ahsanullah Master from behind, clubbing the demonstrators and firing teargas canisters while it was crossing Dainik Bangla roundabout in Motijheel commercial area at about 12:30pm.
The procession was heading for the party headquarters at Bangabandhu Avenue through Rajuk Avenue. Saber, also the AL organising secretary, and Ahsanullah, the general secretary of the Jatiya Sramik League, fell to the ground unconscious in police beating attempting to rescue demonstrators under police attack.
An autorickshaw of a newspaper on hartal duty ferried seriously injured Saber and Ahsanullah Master to Dhaka Medical College Hospital. Master was given several stitches in the head.
Motijheel commercial hub became a battlefield during the 20-minute clash with the demonstrators throwing stones at police. The clash left at least 25 people injured.
The AL leaders alleged that some ruling alliance activists from roadside buildings hurled at least three bombs and stones at the procession when the demonstrators came under police attack.
Police swooped also on a procession taken out from the AL headquarters at Bangabandhu Avenue and spearheaded by former minister Motia Chowdhury, former Dhaka mayor Mohammad Hanif and ex-state minister Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya at about 1:30pm.
Motia and several others were beaten up when they tried to proceed through the barbed-wire fences police had put up.
Police went into action to quell antigovt demonstrations in the city's Mirpur area, Shahbagh crossing, near the AL headquarters at Bangabandhu Avenue, Jatrabari roundabout and other places.
At Mirpur, at least 30 people and some policemen were injured when police charged baton on hartal supporters, prompting them to rain brickbats on police at about 10:20am.
Police cordoned a wayside rally of a few hundred Awami League, Jubo League and Mohila League activists. They swung into action when some activists from the rally threw stones ata public bus that was passing by. Some of the stones also hit policemen, according to witnesses.
The retreating pickets, some of
whom had already taken shelter in Mohona, the local AL office, and in nearby lanes, started raining brickbats on the law enforcers. Police fired three teargas canisters to disperse the demonstrators.
Some of the injured were taken to hospital while some others were given first-aid inside the AL local office. The hartal supporters vandalised at least three passenger buses.
After the incident, police besieged the AL office confining more than 100 AL activists including former MP Kamal Ahmed Majumder and Jubo League General Secretary Mainul Islam Khan Nikhil.
Earlier, police scuffled with women AL activists at the same place and clubbed some of them when a Jubo League procession just behind them threw stones at some buses.
Police also used batons to disperse a BCL gathering at Shahbagh intersection, leaving some 25 injured. The law enforcers, both male and female, assaulted female workers of AL's student wing, Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) at Shahbagh and dragged at least nine to police van.
Police also beat up BCL demonstrators staging a sit-in at Shahbagh when some of them tried to damage an autorickshaw. BCL leader Syed Abul Kalam was admitted to the DMCH in a critical condition.
There were also sporadic police attacks on pro-hartal activists near the AL headquarters till morning when the opposition activists tried to demonstrate on the streets breaking police barricades.
Frontline AL leaders also demonstrated near the Russell Square at Dhanmondi during the hartal hours.
At least six AL activists were injured, one of them seriously, at Kolaroa of Satkhira when the ruling BNP activists attacked on a procession during the hartal, sources and witnesses said.
Seven people were injured in Chittagong where the hartal otherwise passed off peacefully.
On hearing the news that Relief and Social Welfare Secretary Nazma Rahman was arrested in Dhaka, agitated AL activists in Narayanganj set fire to a tempo and vandalised several other vehicles.
Hartal passed peacefully in Barisal, Bogra, Gopalganj, Habiganj, Noakhali, and industrial city of Khulna without untoward incidents.