Unidentified miscreants early Friday set fire to a room of the village home of Jatiya Chhatra Shakti leader Md Saifullah at Dhobaura upazila of Mymensingh.

No casualties were reported as the room was a storeroom and empty at the time of the attack.

The incident took place at about 3:00am Friday, said Dhobaura police officer-in-charge Shafiqul Islam.

The organisation blamed Awami League, which is currently banned from holding activities, and its student wing banned Bangladesh Chhatra League for the incident.

OC Shafiqul Islam said that law enforcers, including the police and army, on information visited the scene early in the morning.

According to the preliminary statement of Saifullah’s brother Zainal Abedin, a wooden storage room had caught fire, he said.

‘We also saw three hacking marks on the tin wall of the house, and the tin had been cut. Family members themselves put out the fire before the fire service reached the spot,’ he said.

The police officer added that Zainal had claimed the attackers came chanting slogans, but the police had not yet found any witnesses supporting that claim.

‘The family has not filed any complaint yet. However, an intensive investigation is under way into the incident,’ he added.

Meanwhile, leaders and activists of Jatiya Chhatra Shakti, , the student wing of the National Citizen Party, on Friday evening brought out an immediate protest procession over the attack.

The procession began from the university’s VC Chattar and ended with a brief rally at the base of the anti-terrorism Raju Memorial Sculpture.

At the rally, Dhaka University Chhatra Shakti president Tahmid Al Mudassir Chowdhury said that Awami League ‘terrorists’ were still active even in the post–5 August Bangladesh.

Former key coordinator of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement during July Uprising, Abdul Kader, in an incendiary speech blamed Awami League, which he described as a ‘killer league’, for the incident, calling on the government to act.

Earlier on March 9, Rahid Khan Pavel, a philosophy department student, was allegedly beaten and handed over to the police by NCP members over suspicions that he was involved with the banned Bangladesh Chhatra League.

Later, Pavel’s mother filed a police complaint against several students, alleging that Chhatra Shakti DU unit organising secretary Md Saifullah and others beat Pavel for over two hours before handing him over to the police.