New Delhi: Two months after an interim government was set up in Bangladesh following student protest that led to the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the country is on the boil again over President Mohammed Shahabuddin’s recent comment on the deposed leader. Over a hundred protesters on Tuesday tried to storm the presidential palace, demanding President Shahabuddin’s resignation.
The fresh protests began after President Shahabuddin, in an interview, claimed he did not have any documentary evidence of Hasina resigning as prime minister before she fled the country on August 5.
Witnesses and TV footage showed protestors scuffling with police as they barred the demonstrators from entering the Bangabhaban.
The police eventually fired sound grenades, prompting army troops to later intervene and then send policemen inside the palace. At least two people sustained gunshot injuries during the protests, local media reported.
A third person was wounded by a sound grenade used to create a sound explosion to disperse violent mobs, according to local reports.
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The protests were led by anti-discrimination Student Movement, which spearheaded the campaign that led to the ouster of Hasina.
It set a seven-day deadline for Shahabuddin’s removal as they laid a five-point demand, including the scrapping of Bangladesh’s 1972 Constitution.
"Our first point (of the five-point demand) is immediate scrapping of the 'pro-Mujb (Bangladesh’s founding leader) 1972 Constitution' which kept Chuppu (president’s nickname) in office," said Hasnat Abdullah, one of the coordinators of the Anti-Discrimination Students Movement.
He said the protestors would "return to the streets with full force" if the government failed to meet the demands by this week.
Several other groups under different banners joined Tuesday’s protests alongside the Anti-Discrimination Students Movement at the premier Dhaka University campus, Shaheed Minar, and Bangabhaban.
Law affairs adviser, equivalent to minister, of Professor Muhammad Yunus’s interim government Asif Nazrul earlier accused Shahabuddin of "falsehood" saying his remarks were "tantamount to violation of his oath of office".
In a August 5 address to the nation, Shahabuddin said: "You know Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has tendered her resignation letter to the president and I have received it." He made the televised address as army chief General Waker uz Zaman along with navy and air chiefs stood beside him.
Bangladesh's Parliament has the authority to impeach the president but the "interim government may take any action (against the president) as many things are now happening beyond the law," said Constitution expert Shahdhin Malik, according to news agency PTI.
Bangabhaban, meanwhile, in a statement said the president urged the people not to reignite controversy over a “settled issue”.
"This is a clear statement from the president that answers regarding the resignation and departure of the former prime minister (Hasina) in the face of the students-people mass revolution, the dissolution of the Parliament, and all the questions raised in the public mind about the Constitutional validity of the incumbent Interim government are reflected in the order of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in Special Reference No-01/2024, dated August 8, 2024,” the statement said.
Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, 84, became Bangladesh's interim government's Chief Adviser on August 8 after Prime Minister Hasina fled to India on August 5.
With inputs from PTI