DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Angry protesters stormed the offices of Bangladesh’s two leading newspapers late on Thursday after news reached the country from Singapore of the death of a prominent activist in last year’s political uprising in Bangladesh.
Sharif Osman Hadi, a spokesperson for the Inqilab Moncho culture group, died in hospital in Singapore earlier in the evening, after losing a weeklong battle for his life.
He was shot on the streets of Dhaka, the Bangladesh capital, last Friday while riding on a rickshaw. Two men on a motorbike followed Hadi and one shot him before fleeing the scene. After days of treatment in Dhaka, he was flown to Singapore in critical condition.
Authorities have said they identified the suspects and that the shooter had most probably fled to India.
Hadi was a fierce critic of both neighboring India and former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, whose 15-year rule of Bangladesh ended in last year’s uprising.
Hadi had planned to run as an independent candidate in a major constituency in Dhaka in the next national elections which the country’s interim government has announced for February.
Since Hasina’s ouster, the Inqilab Moncho group has promoted anti-Indian sentiment in the Muslim-majority country. Hasina now lives in self-imposed exile in India.
Witnesses and media reports said hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Dhaka immediately after the news of Hadi’s death, rallying on Shahbagh Square near the Dhaka University campus. There were also similar protests elsewhere in the country.
Later, a group of protesters gathered outside the head office of the country’s leading Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily in Dhaka’s Karwan Bazar area. They then surged into the building, according to online portals of various leading media outlets.
A few hundred yards away, another group of protesters pushed into the premises of the country’s leading English-language Daily Star and set fire to the building, according to footage from the Kaler Kantha newspaper, another mainstream newspaper.
Soldiers and para-military border guards deployed outside the two buildings but did not take any action to disperse the protesters. Security officials tried to convince them to leave peacefully as firefighters arrived at the scene outside the Daily Star building.
The attack on Hadi is still being investigated, but the shooting has set off tensions in the already fragile political situation.
Bangladesh’s interim leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, who took over three days after Hasina’s ouster in August 2024, promised in a televised address to the nation late Thursday to punish Hadi’s killers.
He announced Saturday would be a day of mourning across the country and urged Thursday’s protesters to stay calm.
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