Agitators start fast unto death

Candidates protesting the leak of the medical college admission test question started a fast unto death at the capital's Central Shaheed Minar yesterday, after their earlier programmes like marches, rallies, and exhibitions failed to change the government's position.

Around 60 admission aspirants and guardians started the strike around 11:00am, and it was going on till the report was filed around 2:00am.

Some protesters fell sick due to fasting.

The candidates have been demanding a fresh admission test as, they claimed, the test questions were leaked a day before the exam was held on September 18.

The demonstrators are determined to continue their hunger strike until the health ministry accepts their demand for re-running the test.

Politicians, leaders and activists of student organisations, students of Dhaka University and the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet), and different professionals joined the protesters and expressed solidarity with their demand.

President of Bangladesh Chhatra Union Lucky Akhter said the government tried to foil the demonstration in various ways to cover up the question leak.

"The health ministry is trying to legitimise the question leak by letting the admission process continue in medical colleges. Though question leaks are an 'abnormal' incident, they have become common in the perspective of Bangladesh as question papers of the primary certificate examination to job examinations are getting leaked readily," she said.

Students and guardians demanded the prime minister's intervention to solve the problem.

They said ministers and lawmakers were not bothered about the demonstration as they were dependent on foreign hospitals for treatment. Principal Ashraf Kamal, spokesperson of the guardians, said, "The prime minister, the health minister, and the lawmakers go to Singapore, Thailand for medical checkups but where will the public go for treatment if quacks serve in the medical sector?" He requested the prime minister to spend five minutes for seeing the evidence of the leak.  Enamul Haque, a water resources engineer, said, "The health ministry is blatantly disregarding innocent students' protest." Ahsan Habib Lavlu, a leader of the Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB), called the government's decision to not cancel the test anti-people. The agitators said the death of a University Grants Commission official, held over allegations of the leak, in Rab custody and the arrest of some people in Rangpur and Dhaka proved the question leak.