Pro-fatwa mob vents ire on Dhaka police, one cop dead

Pro-fatwa mob vents ire on Dhaka police, one cop dead
Anis Ahmed

DHAKA, FEB 3: Muslims enraged by a ban on Islamic edicts involving women’s rights killed a policeman and wounded 15 others in the Bangladesh capital on Saturday, police said.

They overpowered a police patrol in the city’s Mohammadpur area, dragged the officers to a nearby religious school and beat them with sticks.

The body of the policeman who died has been recovered and over 35 of the demonstrators arrested, said a police spokesman.

Two other people died when a bomb exploded on a rickshaw in Dhaka’s Pallabi area on Saturday, police added.

Nearly 100 other people were injured as police fought running battles with militants in Dhaka and its outskirts, according to witnesses.

Police said they arrested at least 40 people for throwing stones.

Witnesses said police used batons and teargas, but Mohammad Wasel, a spokesman for the Islamists, said police also used rubber bullets.

Riot police and paramilitary troopers deployed in the capital on Saturday to prevent violence after Islami Oikyo Jote, a radical Muslim coalition, called for a day-long strike in protest against a court ruling.

The Bangladesh High Court decided in December to ban fatwas, or edicts by Islamic clerics, that could subject women to torture for alleged adultery and prevent them from mixing and working with men outside their families.