CU BCL halts shuttle trains for 2hrs for stolen phone
Because one of its activists was robbed of his mobile phone at a rail station, Bangladesh Chhatra League of Chittagong University yesterday halted the operation of the university shuttle trains for two hours in protest.
Many of the several thousand students heading for the campus in the morning could not attend classes for the barricade at Sholoshahar station in the port city, said victims.
While students suffered, the BCL protesters called it a "symbolic barricade" and moved away from the tracks around 9:30am after CU administrative officials assured them of taking the matter to police for action against the muggers, said the officials.
Deb Dutta Roy, a master's student of journalism, who missed two classes due to the delay, said, "The political bodies halted shuttle trains often at their will... General students have become hostage of them...if anybody protests, they beat him up.”
The shuttle train is the main transport for over 10,000 non-resident students. The six dormitories for male and three for female students can house only 8,000 out of the total 20,000 students of CU.
On Friday evening, local muggers took away the phone of a BCL activist at Sholoshahar station and attacked his co-activists when they chased the criminals, said MA Malek, a BCL leader of CU where the committee is dissolved now. One of the injured was treated in Chittagong Medical College Hospital, he told The Daily Star.
Malek said, “We filed a case on Friday evening and today we observed a symbolic barricade to draw the attention of the authorities to arrest the muggers.” He added that the barricade was in the interest of general students and their safety.
About all this, Proctor Siraj-ud-Daula only said it was a very bad practice that shuttle trains were halted over any trifling matter. “It is the duty of police to arrest the muggers. What will the university administration do here?"
Yasin Faruk Majumder, officer-in-charge of Government Railway Police Station, Chittagong, said they had arrested a suspected mugger.
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