1 picket hurt as cops open fire in Sabujbagh
A youth was shot this morning when police, after coming under attack by pickets, opened fire on them at Sabujbagh in Dhaka as the BNP-led 20-party alliance enforced its first hartal (shutdown) after the January 5 general election.
According to police, the pickets hurled homemade bombs on them, leaving a police constable injured, prompting the law enforcers to swing into action.
Elsewhere in Dhaka and rest of the country, life was quite normal with offices and business going on quite as usual and quite a large number of traffic was seen plying the streets, our correspondents reported.
Apart from some processions at Mohakhali, Farmgate, Shantinagar and Dhaka University area in the capital, no activities of the opposition were found.
A police officer of Shabujbagh Police Station, seeking anonymity, said a group of pickets vandalised at least three vehicles from a procession at Madartek around 11:30am.
As the law enforcers tried to resist them, they hurled three crude bombs targeting the law enforcers, leaving constable Abdul injured.
In retaliation, police fired from their shotguns and tried to disperse the pickets, leaving Johnny, 23, injured, he added.
Johnny was admitted to Dhaka Medical College and Hospital.
Meanwhile, law enforcers detained five pickets from Shantinagar area when they tried to vandalise vehicles from a procession around 11:00am, said Morshed Alam, officer-in-charge of Paltan Police Station.
The alliance enforced the hartal protesting the constitutional amendment that empowered parliament to impeach Supreme Court judges for misbehaviour and incapacity.
Although the alliance called the hartal from 6:00am, the country is in the grip of 36-hour shutdown, as Jamaat-e-Islami observed a 24-hour hartal across the country that ended this morning.
Jamaat called the strike protesting a Supreme Court verdict that sentenced its Nayeb-e-Ameer Delawar Hossain Sayedee to imprisonment until death.
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