Student dies after being allegedly pushed off from moving bus
Agitated students take to the street, demanding immediate capture and punishment of the bus driver and his assistant
A student of Sylhet Agricultural University (SAU) has died under the wheels of a bus in Moulvibazar after he was reportedly pushed off the moving vehicle by the driver’s assistant during an altercation.
According to witnesses and police, the incident took place on Dhaka-Sylhet Highway in Sadar upazila’s Sherpur Muktijoddha Chattar area around 5pm on Saturday — just days after the death of a private university student in Dhaka rekindled last year’s road safety movement across the country.
The deceased was identified as Ghori Md Wasim Hasnat, a final-year student at SAU’s Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Faculty. He was from Habiganj’s Nabiganj upazila.
Another student named Rakib Hossain was also injured in the incident.
Hearing the news of Wasim’s death, hundreds of agitated students of the university took to the street in Sylhet and Moulvibazar by blockading the highway near the campus — demanding immediate capture and punishment of the Udar Paribahan bus’s driver and his assistant.
The students said their demonstration would continue until the authorities take definite measures.
Some students also attacked and vandalized the Udar Paribahan counter at Sylhet’s Kadamtali Bus Stand.
According to SAU student Nayan Ranjan Ghosh, who was with Wasim, 11 of them were returning to the campus on the Sylhet-bound Udar Paribahan bus after attending a wedding ceremony in Habiganj’s Debpara.
An argument broke out between the students and the driver’s assistant over the fare, he said, and at one point, Wasim and Rakib were pushed out of the moving bus’s door by the assistant.
Wasim was run over by the vehicle immediately, while Rakib managed to survive even after jumping off the moving bus.
Wasim succumbed to his injuries while he was being rushed to Sylhet MAG Osmani Medical College Hospital. He body was kept at the hospital’s morgue after the duty doctors declared him dead on arrival.
His family members, SAU Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Md Matiar Rahman Howlader and hundreds of students had also thronged the hospital premises.
“Wasim did not die in a road accident. It was a murder,” Prof Matiar told Bangla Tribune.
Police later impounded the bus from Begumpur area in Sylhet’s Osmaningar upazila, but its driver and his assistant had managed to flee, said Sherpur police outpost’s Assistant Sub-Inspector Md Sharif Ahmed.
