Dhaka: Police foiled an attempt of Progressive Students’ Alliance (Pragatishil Chhatra Jote), a platform of leftist student organisations, to stage demonstrations in front of Shahbagh intersection demanding cancellation of Rampal power plant project during National Committee’s hartal in Dhaka.

Witnesses said the activists of Progressive Students’Alliance brought out a procession in front of TSC at about 7:00am and tried to march towards Shahbagh intersection in support of hartal enforced by the National Committee to Protect Oil-Gas-Natural Resources and Power-Port.

When the procession reached in front of the National Museum police obstructed them, leading to a scuffle.

At one stage, police fired rubber bullets, tear gas shells and water cannons to disperse them.

Progressive Students’ Alliance leaders claimed that seven people, including Lucky Akter, president of Chhatra Union and Umme Habiba Benazir, president of DU Chhatra Federation, Farzan, vice-president of Chhatra Union’s central committee, Laboni, Mondol, Raihan, Nasir, Kakon, were injured in the police action.

They were admitted to Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

‘There were some 200 protesters. We fired tear gas at them after they threw bricks at us. We also used water cannon,’ Maruf Hossain Sorder, deputy commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police.

The half-day hartal enforced by the National Committee to Protect Oil-Gas-Natural Resources and Power-Port demanding cancellation of Rampal power plant project near the Sundarbans is underway in Dhaka.

Campaigners have been protesting for the last three years against the under-construction plant which is 14 kilometres (nine miles) north of Sundarbans forest, part of which is a UNESCO world heritage site.

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina defended the project and rejected concerns about it as politically motivated.
She said the plant was needed to provide power to the impoverished south.