Dhaka : Giving in to the demands of student protesters, Bangladesh’s Cabinet on Monday approved a new road safety law and promised to consider death penalty for deliberately causing accidents as violent clashes between the demonstrators and police continued to cripple normal life in Dhaka.
The protests sparked last week after two teenage students — a boy and a girl — were killed when two buses racing to pick passengers, a common occurrence in the city, hit them and wounded several others. One of the bus drivers fled, though both were later arrested.
Police on Monday lobbed tear shells, used water cannons and charged batons to disperse a procession brought out by the Dhaka University students demanding safe roads and protesting the ongoing attacks on students, The Daily Star reported.
The government rushed the new draft of the Road Transport Act 2018 to the Cabinet amid pressure from student protests for safe roads and an unannounced strike by bus operators in response to the demonstrations. “The Cabinet today approved the Road Transport Act 2018 with provisions of highest five years of rigorous imprisonment for reckless driving while the term was three years,” Cabinet secretary Shafiul Alam told media after the Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.