No BCL man held week past attack on principal's house

Teachers, employees, and their family members joined an hour-long human chain in front of Sylhet Polytechnic Institute in the city yesterday, expressing frustrations that police have not yet arrested any of the alleged extortionists of Bangladesh Chhatra League who vandalised the principal's official residence and robbed him a week ago.

They said the law enforcers had failed to arrest any of the four accused in the case, which was filed by Sushanta Kumar Basu, the principal, for the January 25 night's attack. Police said they were "trying" to hunt down the culprits.

The speakers said the students' dormitory, Surma Hostel, was a den of criminals, who had long been engaged in extortion, mugging in Khozarkhola and neighbouring areas. The same people had attacked the principal's office and residence twice last year, they alleged.

Blaming the BCL men and outsiders for such wrongdoings, they called for shutdown of the dorm.

On Friday night, the teachers and staff handed over a memorandum to the education minister, demanding punitive action against the BCL goons.

On January 25, about a hundred activists vandalised the principal's household articles, a motorbike, and three official microbuses, and took away his two mobile phones and a laptop after he refused to pay them Tk 20,000 as extortion money on the occasion of Saraswati Puja.