The death of student leader and aspiring lawmaker Sharif Osman Hadi sparked violence in Bangladesh, where mobs of his supporters burned down the headquarters of major newspapers last night and wreaked havoc in the capital in what the interim government described as “sabotage” aimed at derailing February elections.
Hadi, 32, a key figure in the uprising that toppled the previous regime in 2024, died in a Singapore hospital on Thursday after succumbing to serious injuries sustained when he was shot in the head in Dhaka on December 12 when he was attacked by gunmen while riding a rickshaw on a motorcycle.
Minutes after the news was confirmed, hundreds of protesters stormed Dhaka’s Karwan Bazar district in the early hours of this Friday and set fire to the offices of Prothom Alo and The Daily Star, the country’s two most influential newspapers, accusing them of not supporting their cause, according to media reports.
According to images shared by local media and eyewitnesses, army and border guard units stationed outside the buildings were slow to intervene to stop the fires and vandalism.
They offer a reward for assassins
The Inqilab Mancha platform, of which Hadi was a spokesman, immediately declared him a “martyr in the fight against Indian hegemony,” a narrative that has fueled attacks on diplomatic symbols in other cities.
The deceased, known for his nationalist rhetoric, stood as an independent candidate from a constituency in Dhaka for the February 12 elections.
The head of the interim government and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus denounced in a televised speech that the murder was not an isolated incident, but a calculated coup by a network of conspirators.
“The aim is to derail the elections. It is a symbolic attack to show their strength and sabotage the entire democratic process,” warned Yunus, who ordered a day of national mourning and prayers this Friday.
As police offer the killers a five million taka (about $42,000) reward and report twenty arrests, the violence threatens to shatter Bangladesh’s fragile stability less than two months before historic elections that were supposed to seal the democratic transition.
mg (efe, reuters)
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