Imagine that you are a parent who sent your beloved child to one of Bangladesh’s leading public universities. After competing against thousands of applicants and passing a highly competitive admission examination, your child has earned the opportunity to study there. One day, while your child is studying in the university’s central library, members or supporters of a powerful student organisation enter the premises, seize your child, and start beating him. Around them, terrified students shout; some record the attack on their phones. Your child struggles to survive, but the attackers appear so aggressive that few people dare to intervene.
Eventually, your injured child is placed in an ambulance. But the attackers return, stop the ambulance, drag him out and assault him again. After somehow reaching the hospital, your child discovers that his injury is less urgent than being arrested in an anti-terrorism case. Meanwhile, those visibly accused of leading the attack remain free, walk around the campus, hold press conferences, and threaten journalists for reporting on the incident and circulating video footage.
You go to the police to file a case. They refuse to accept, forcing you to approach a court, and only then is your complaint registered and sent for investigation. This is not a political dystopia; it happened at Rajshahi University (RU). Of course, we have witnessed such incidents in Bangladesh in the past, especially during the Awami League regime, but that’s a discussion for another day.
On July 27, according to media reports, three students were assaulted inside the central library of RU. The allegations involve Rajshahi University Central Students’ Union (Rucsu) General Secretary Salahuddin Ammar, other student union leaders, and activists associated with Islami Chhatra Shibir. Videos circulated from the scene reportedly show Ammar approaching the library and striking a student with a stick inside the reading room. Other footage appears to show injured student Mahmudul Hasan Mahin being dragged out of an ambulance and assaulted again.
Mahin’s father later filed a complaint against Ammar and eight others. The police initially refused to register the case, forcing the family to approach the court. The court subsequently instructed the Police Bureau of Investigation (PBI) to conduct a preliminary investigation.
The events preceding the library assault should not be ignored. A female student reportedly complained to the university proctor that she had been threatened. Tensions later developed between a group of students, proctorial authorities, and student union representatives. There were also allegations that some students attacked the Rucsu building and injured a student leader. All these allegations deserve investigation. But none of them gives Ammar or any other student the right to attack other students.
Retaliation is not justice. A student union is not a mobile court. Its elected representatives are not police officers, prosecutors, or executioners. This is the central question raised by the RU incident. Whether the assaulted students were previously associated with the Bangladesh Chhatra League or whether they participated in earlier confrontations cannot legitimise violence. If they are accused of involvement with a banned organisation or of committing criminal acts, the police should investigate them, and the courts should determine their guilt.
Labelling someone “Chhatra League” and attacking them with sticks and rods merely reproduces the same culture of political terror that students sought to counter during the July uprising. Ammar is not simply an impulsive student caught in a spontaneous confrontation. He is the elected general secretary of Rucsu, a position that carries responsibilities. He was elected to represent students, protect their rights and push the administration to resolve conflicts through institutional mechanisms. Instead, available videos and media reports raise serious allegations against him. He has repeatedly been linked to allegations of campus violence and intimidation over the past two years. The message that emerges from these allegations involving Rucsu leaders is that winning a student union election allows officeholders to decide who belongs on campus, who deserves protection, and who may be beaten or intimidated.
And administrative silence amounts to institutional complicity. Following the latest episode, the RU administration formed a five-member investigation committee. But this does not erase its failures. How could a group enter the central library and assault students? Why couldn’t the members of the proctorial body stop this? How could an injured student be dragged from an ambulance? Why were those visibly accused of participating in the attack not immediately detained or suspended pending investigation? The university authorities must demonstrate that this committee is not another administrative burial ground. Those implicated in the violence should be temporarily removed from positions through which they can influence witnesses or the probe.
The police response also warrants critical scrutiny. Two of the assaulted students were reportedly shown arrested in an earlier case. When people accused of physical assault that is on record remain free while the injured are swiftly arrested under anti-terrorism provisions, the neutrality of law enforcement becomes difficult to defend. In such circumstances, the law begins to look less like an instrument of justice and more like a tool of selective punishment.
Moreover, if individuals elected from a Shibir-backed panel participated in the assault, the organisation had an immediate moral and political duty to distance itself from them, suspend those accused and demand an independent investigation. Instead, denial and silence have dominated its response. An organisation cannot credibly condemn Chhatra League’s campus terror while protecting similar behaviour by its own supporters. That is not a principled opposition to violence. It is merely a demand to monopolise it.
We cannot dismiss the incident as merely an internal dispute. After the July uprising, Bangladesh’s universities were supposed to move towards peace, coexistence, and intellectual freedom. One of the central promises of July was that state-sponsored and party-sponsored violence would no longer determine who could speak, organise, or remain on campus. Ultimately, the issue here is not about one incident or organisation. The fundamental question is whether a student’s safety at a public university depends on law or political identity. If political identity determines who may be targeted, then we may never break away from the culture where today’s dominant group assaults its opponents and tomorrow’s dominant group seeks revenge. The university will thus cease to be a place of learning.
Asif Bin Ali is a geopolitical analyst and doctoral fellow at Georgia State University in the US. He can be reached at [email protected].
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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