After a break for two and a half hour, sudents of Government Titumir College again blocked the Mohakhali-Gulshan link road in front of their college on Monday evening with 12-point demands, including of upgrading the college into a university.
The protest in the second phase started around 6:30pm. Earlier, around two thousand students of the college blocked the Mohakhali intersection at around 11:15am.
Later, when a 12-member delegation of them went to the Secretariat for discussion, they left the road around 4:00pm, reports our correspondent.
However, at the end of the discussion, the delegation announced a hunger strike in front of the Secretariat. On receiving the news, other students blocked the road in Mohakhali at 6:30pm.
The blockade caused untold suffering for the city commuters as all vehicles were forced to become standstill on roads surrounding the college.
Students of Titumir College have repeatedly staged road blockades in recent months, demanding the college be upgraded to a university and the formation of a Titumir University Commission.
Due to the students' blockade, traffic came to a halt on both sides of the road from Mohakhali to the airport.
With no vehicles available, many people were forced to walk to their destinations.
Traffic also came to a halt in the Mirpur area, with vehicles on the Begum Rokeya Sarani stuck at a place for hours, eyewitnesses said.
Traffic also came to halt on the link road between Agargaon and the Chief Adviser's Office.
Eyewitnesses said that while both the Mohakhali flyover and the road below were closed to traffic, the elevated expressway remained operational.
They also mentioned that the protesters were only allowing ambulances and CNG-run autorickshaws carrying patients to pass through.
Rail operations interrupted for over four hours
No trains were seen passing through Mohakhali while the blockade was in place.
"Railway operations resumed after over four hours at 4:10pm. However, all the trains to and from Dhaka got delayed due the blockade," Khairul Kabir, divisional transport official (Dhaka Division) of Bangladesh Railway said.
Meanwhile, Zoynal Abedin, officer in charge of Dhaka Railway Police Station, said a group of students attacked Upakul Express around 11:30am, damaging several windows of the inter-city train.
