NEW DELHI, September 9 (IslamOnline) - Dhaka’s Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) was closed indefinitely Sunday, September 8, after around 100 people were injured in clashes with police, using batons and tear gas to control a crowd of several thousand students. Several injured students were hospitalized.

Clashes erupted after two dozen hunger-striking students were attacked by rivals. Police had to use force to disperse several thousand students marching on the campus supporting of the strikers. As the state of the hunger strikers worsened, at least six were forcibly taken to hospitals by authorities.

University authorities ordered the campus shut indefinitely and ordered students to vacate dormitories by the end of the day. “The situation had deteriorated to such an extent with students cutting telephone and electricity lines, there was no choice but to shut the university indefinitely,” Vice Chancellor Ali Murtoza told reporters.

The student agitators are pressing for the arrest of those responsible for the murder of a female student in June, allegedly by members of the student front of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). A number of people have already been arrested in connection with the murder.

Like elsewhere in the Subcontinent, students are deeply involved in politics in Bangladeshi universities and colleges. All major political parties have their student outfits. It is a legacy of the freedom movement in the Subcontinent when students were encouraged to come to the streets against the alien rulers. After independence political parties started using students for their own narrow interests.

Early this month Bangladesh witnessed a country-wide one-day strike. It was called by the main opposition party, Awami League, on September 1. Nearly 50 people were injured in clashes with the police on that day in two Bangladesh cities.

According to reports around 20 activists of opposition Awami League were injured in a clash with police outside the party’s headquarters in the capital Dhaka. At least 30 others were hurt and one person was killed in fighting between activists of the Awami League and the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in the coastal town of Barguna. Clashes also took place in the city of Chittagong.

The September 1 strike was called after a mob attack on August 30 on a convoy of cars carrying opposition leader Sheikh Hasina. The opposition blamed the ruling party for arranging the attack. Hasina, who was the prime minister of Bangladesh from 1996 to 2001, lost last October’s general election to a four-party alliance headed by Begum Khaleda Zia.

A week earlier more than 100 people were injured and some 40 arrested in a fierce gunfight on August 25 between rival ruling party supporters in Bangladesh.

According to a report August 26 in the Ittefaq newspaper, clashes erupted in the Munshiganj district near Bangladesh between groups supporting rival candidates of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in forthcoming local elections. The gun fight left more than 100 people injured, including 30 who were hit by bullets.

Violence and strikes over political disputes and charges of persecution of rivals by ruling parties have been a routine feature in impoverished Bangladesh.