Sufia Kamal Hall: Four students thrown out late at night

Dhaka University's Kabi Sufia Kamal Hall authorities handed four female students over to their guardians late last night.

According to other students, the four were driven out of the hall on the allegation that they had spread rumours using fake accounts on Facebook during the April 10 incident at the dormitory.

Two of them left the women's dormitory at midnight while the others walked out at 10:30pm yesterday, according to witnesses.

The official version as to why the students were “driven out” at night was not known. The hall Provost Prof Sabita Rizwana did not answer her phone despite repeated attempts by The Daily Star.

Three of the students are Farhin and Sharmin Akter Shuvo Kamrun Nahar Liza of mathematics department and Kamrun Nahar Liza of theatre and performance studies department.

Identity of a fourth student, who came out of the hall around 12:15am, could not be known.

Wishing anonymity, several students of the hall said they were intimidated and threatened by the authorities in the evening.

Asked what had happened, a man who received Sharmin from the hall authorities around 12:00am, said the provost had forbidden him to say anything.

Several students of the dormitory told reporters that the authorities had summoned eight students to the hall office around 5:30pm and seized their mobile phones.

The authorities then told the students that they should leave the dormitory and called their local guardians to pick them up.

Faruk Hasan, father of physics student Rimi, who was entering the hall around 12:30am to receive his daughter, said, “The provost had called me around 8:00pm and said she will not be allowed to stay in the hall and asked me to pick my daughter up.

“Then I started from Dhamrai amid rain. I do not know why she is being driven out,” he told reporters at gate of the hall.

An employee of the hall requesting anonymity said he had seen many students leaving the dormitory yesterday afternoon.

Contacted, DU Proctor AKM Golam Rabbani told The Daily Star “The students were not driven out. They were handed over to their guardians....”

When asked why it happened in the dead of the night, he said, “Ask the hall provost.”

As the news started to spread, a number of students, including leaders of Bangladesh Shadharan Chhatra Odhikar Sangrakkhan Parishad, a platform of the students who had been demonstrating for a fundamental reform in the country's quota system in civil service, thronged the hall gate.

“The hall authorities have driven out the students without any investigation or discussion. It is an audacity. We deeply condemned the incident and demand resignation of the provost,” Hasan Al Mamun, convener of the Parishad told reporters.

On April 10, some photos of a female student at Kabi Sufia Kamal Hall went viral on the social media. The victim alleged that she was tortured by some female BCL leaders for taking part in the demonstrations for quota reforms.

According to some students at the hall, Iffat, BCL president in the hall, was allegedly assaulting three students inside her room around 12:30am for joining the protests.

Hearing screams of the students, Morsheda Akhtar, a fourth-year student of botany and also vice president of the BCL hall unit, rushed to Iffat's room. Finding it locked, she got angry, kicked a window of the room and cut her foot, they said.

Some photos of her wounded leg were doing the rounds on Facebook with captions that Iffat had cut tendons of Morsheda's leg.  

Iffat was suspended by the university soon afterwards, but the authorities took her back in later.