Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now the most followed world leader on the social media platform X with over 100 million followers

Bangladesh on Friday announced the imposition of a curfew and the deployment of military forces after police failed to quell days of deadly unrest that has spread throughout the country.

This week’s clashes between student demonstrators and police have killed at least 105 people, according to an AFP count of victims reported by hospitals, and pose a momentous challenge to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s autocratic government after 15 years in office.

“The government has decided to impose a curfew and deploy the military in aid of the civilian authorities,” Hasina’s press secretary Nayeemul Islam Khan told AFP.

He added that the curfew would take immediate effect.

Police in the capital Dhaka earlier took the drastic step of banning all public gatherings for the day — a first since protests began — in an effort to forestall more violence. 

“We’ve banned all rallies, processions and public gatherings in Dhaka today,” police chief Habibur Rahman told AFP, adding the move was necessary to ensure “public safety”.

That however did not stop another round of confrontations between police and protesters around the sprawling megacity of 20 million people, despite an internet shutdown aimed at frustrating the organisation of rallies.

“Our protest will continue,” Sarwar Tushar, who joined a march in the capital and sustained minor injuries when it was violently dispersed by police, told AFP. 

“We want the immediate resignation of Sheikh Hasina. The government is responsible for the killings.”

Student protesters stormed a jail in the central Bangladeshi district of Narsingdi and freed its inmates before setting the facility on fire, a police officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“I don’t know the number of inmates, but it would be in the hundreds,” he added.

– ‘Shocking and unacceptable’ –

At least 52 people were killed in the capital on Friday, according to a list drawn up by the Dhaka Medical College Hospital and seen by AFP.

Police fire was the cause of more than half of the deaths reported so far this week, based on descriptions given to AFP by hospital staff. 

UN human rights chief Volker Turk said the attacks on student protesters were “shocking and unacceptable”.

“There must be impartial, prompt and exhaustive investigations into these attacks, and those responsible held to account,” he said in a statement.

The capital’s police force earlier said protesters had on Thursday torched, vandalised and carried out “destructive activities” on numerous police and government offices.

Among them was the Dhaka headquarters of state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which remains offline after hundreds of incensed students stormed the premises and set fire to a building.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman Faruk Hossain told AFP that officers had arrested Ruhul Kabir Rizvi Ahmed, one of the top leaders of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). 

– ‘Symbol of a rigged system’ – 

Near-daily marches this month have called for an end to a quota system that reserves more than half of civil service posts for specific groups, including children of veterans from the country’s 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.

Critics say the scheme benefits children of pro-government groups that back Hasina, 76, who has ruled the country since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Hasina’s government is accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including by the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Her administration this week ordered schools and universities to close indefinitely as police stepped up efforts to bring the deteriorating law and order situation under control.

“This is an eruption of the simmering discontent of a youth population built over years,” Ali Riaz, a politics professor at Illinois State University, told AFP. 

“The job quotas became the symbol of a system which is rigged and stacked against them by the regime.”

– ‘Nation-scale’ internet shutdown –

Students say they are determined to press on with protests despite Hasina giving a national address earlier this week on the now-offline state broadcaster seeking to calm the unrest.

Nearly half of Bangladesh’s 64 districts reported clashes on Thursday, broadcaster Independent Television reported.

London-based watchdog NetBlocks said Friday that a “nation-scale” internet shutdown remained in effect a day after it was imposed.

“Metrics show connectivity flatlining at 10% of ordinary levels, raising concerns over public safety as little news flows in or out of the country,” it wrote on social media platform X. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A woman was allegedly shown porn clips and groped by a senior executive from a Jindal group company aboard a flight from Kolkata to Abu Dhabi. Jindal Steel Chairperson Naveen Jindal has assured the woman that the matter will be investigated at the earliest and strict action will be taken against the executive.

Speaking to NDTV on Friday and in a series of posts on X, the 28-year-old, who lives in Kolkata and is the founder of an organisation that works on menstrual rights, said she was headed to Boston and had taken a transit flight to Abu Dhabi on Etihad Airways when a man sitting next to her struck up a conversation with her. She identified the man as Dinesh Kr Saraogi and estimated his age to be around 65.

The woman said Mr Saraogi, a senior executive at a Jindal group company, told her he lives in Oman but travels frequently. Having shared that he is from Churu in Rajasthan and has two sons who are married and live in the US, he extended his support to her as a young person and offered to help her if she needed anything.

“He suddenly moved on to ask me if I have hobbies and I said I enjoy reading and writing. He also asked me if I like watching movies and I said I do. He then pulled out his phone and earphones and said he had some clips he could show me. Not suspecting anything, I agreed. It turned out that he started showing me porn videos. The content was explicit and vulgar and I think my body started going into a state of shock because I just could not understand what was happening,” the woman told NDTV.

“He slowly started nuzzling my neck, coming towards me and moving his hands around my body. That’s when I think I snapped out of that scared state, ran to the washroom and reached out to the air crew. The Etihad team was extremely kind because they could see that I was uncomfortable. When I told them what had happened, they made me sit where the air hostesses usually sit and served me tea and fruits,” she added.

The woman claimed that after she left her seat, Mr Saraogi kept calling the staff members to ask where she had gone and if something had happened to her in the washroom. The air hostess, she said, repeatedly told him that it was not her prerogative to tell him and if something had indeed happened, it was her concern and not his.

“There were only eight business class passengers and all my co-passengers could also tell there was something wrong. The members of the crew informed the Abu Dhabi police and two cops were waiting near the runway when the aircraft landed. I could not file a formal complaint because that would have meant missing my connecting flight to Boston,” she said.

The 28-year-old said the man did not deny what happened and the police told her he was willing to apologise, but she did not want to interact with him and they respected that.

Stating that it was unfortunate that she could not file a complaint in Abu Dhabi itself, the woman said she narrated her account on X and has now written to the Kolkata Police. “I want to ensure this is taken forward in some way or the other so that this does not happen to anyone else.”

‘Showed Courage’

Responding to the woman’s posts on X, Mr Jindal said his group of companies has a zero-tolerance policy on such issues.

“Thank you for reaching out and speaking up! It takes a lot of courage to do what you did and I want you to know that we have a zero-tolerance policy for such matters. I have asked the team to immediately investigate the matter and thereafter strictest and necessary action will be taken,” Mr Jindal, who is also a BJP MP, said.

When NDTV reached out to the industrialist, he refused to comment on the matter.

To a question about his post on X, the woman said that the fact that she got a response was a good sign.

“The reason I decided to put this on social media, putting my mental health at risk, is because I hoped that it would land on the right ears and the response is an indication of that. But it is also a formal response and neither he (Mr Jindal) nor anyone from his team has reached out to me. There is no action that I can see. I hope he will take some action… Predators like him (Mr Saraogi) need to be removed from positions of power,” she said.