Madrasa students on the rampage in Brahmanbarhia

Police said the trouble began on Monday when a student of a madrasa got into an altercation with a mobile-phone shop employee in the town.

Other students of the madrasa turned up and vandalised the shop, then clashed with the police who tried to intervene.

Hafez Masudur Rahman, 20, a student of Jamia Islami Yunusia Madrasa, who was injured in the clash with law enforcers, succumbed to injuries at Brahmanbarhia Sadar Hospital early on Tuesday.

The hospital’s duty medical officer, Mainul Haque Upal, told bdnews24.com that Masudur Rahman had been seriously injured on the left side of his chest and abdomen.

As the news of his death spread, several hundred students went on a rampage in Brahmanbarhia town. They disrupted traffic and smashed several display gates.

They held angry demonstrations, attacked a train station and removed railway sleepers, and burnt tyres on the streets to block off several areas of the town.

The angry students vandalised the district unit office of the ruling Awami League, and a music college named after the renowned composer and music teacher Ustad Alauddin Khan. They set fire to a number of instruments at the college.

They also vandalised the district Shilpakala (Arts) Academy, a branch of Bank Asia in the Mukitijoddha Sangsad Complex, and the premises of a non-government organisation named Proshika.

Police had to fire rubber bullets and use tear gas to disperse the students.

Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) was deployed on Tuesday morning amid mounting tension in the town.

The students have called a dawn-to-dusk shutdown in the district for Wednesday.

The assistant station master at Brahmanbarhia Railway Station, Mainul Islam, said train services through the town were suspended at about 11:15am after the railway sleepers had been removed.

“Train services on the Dhaka-Chittagong and Dhaka-Sylhet routes have been stopped, leaving the Subarna and Kalni express trains stranded,” he said.

However, Dhaka’s rail link with Chittagong and Sylhet was restored after a seven-hour suspension following the violence.

Islam said train services resumed at around 6:50pm after the rail tracks had been repaired.

Lt Col Nazrul Islam, the chief of the 12th batallion of the BGB based in Brahmanbarhia, said that two platoons of troops have been deployed in the town to maintain law and order.

At least 30 handmade bombs were exploded in different parts of the town during Monday’s clash in which about 20 people were injured.

One of them, a policeman named Rajib Chandra Das, 25, has been shifted to Dhaka for better treatment. The others are being treated locally.​