4 vehicles torched in Ctg, Gazipur

Alleged pickets torched four vehicles in Chittagong and Gazipur during the countrywide daylong hartal enforced by Jamaat-e-Islami today.

Five passengers were injured when they tried to get down from the bus hurriedly when miscreants set fire to the bus in Gazipur.

Jamaat enforced the shutdown, protesting the execution of their leader and war criminal Muhammad Kamaruzzaman.

Our Chittagong correspondent reports, a group of 15 to 20 people got down from a bus near Baby Super Market at Panchlaish in the port city around 8:30am.

They poured petrol on three vehicles parked beside the road and set those on fire, said Mohiuddin Mahmud, officer-in-charge Panchlaish Police Station.

The private car, microbus and bus were badly burnt before firefighters from Bayejit station rushed to the spot and put out the blaze around 9:00am, the OC said.

In Gazipur, activists of Jamaat and its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir, torched a bus after pouring petrol in Shibbari Bus Stand area in the town at 6:00am.  

Five passengers of the bus, who were injured while jumping off the vehicle, received treatment from local hospitals.    

Meanwhile, no incident of picketing was reported from anywhere in Dhaka till 11:30am.

Office goers were seen in their usual routine and public vehicles are plying the city thoroughfares in plenty numbers like a normal day.

Jamaat, which opposed Bangladesh's liberation in 1971, called the hartal on Saturday minutes after its assistant secretary general was executed inside Dhaka Central Jail for his 1971 war crimes.

Earlier, the party called 48-hour countrywide hartal after the apex court rejected Kamaruzzaman's appeal for reviewing his death sentence on April 6.