By Parvez Hashem
The recent assault on Hasan Mohammad, an Assistant Professor of Law at Chittagong University, marks a deeply disturbing moment for higher education in Bangladesh. A teacher entrusted with conducting first-year undergraduate admission examinations was physically attacked, dragged across campus, confined inside administrative offices for nine hours, and finally released late at night under official escort. This was not an accident or a misunderstanding. It was a deliberate act of violence carried out in public, recorded on video, and circulated widely on social media.
According to eyewitness accounts, the incident began around noon in front of the Faculty of Law. Led by student leaders of the Chittagong University Central Students’ Union, the teacher was chased from the examination center, forcibly detained, and his personal mobile phone searched. The video footage clearly shows several students dragging him while he screams for help. At one point, he is physically restrained from behind and then pushed into an autorickshaw. These images should alarm anyone who cares about education, legality, and basic human dignity.
No individual, student or otherwise, has the right to physically assault another person. Under the laws of Bangladesh, physical assault is a criminal offence. Searching someone’s mobile phone without legal authority is also a criminal offence. These are not political questions or matters of opinion. They are basic legal facts.
If there were allegations against the teacher, the only lawful path was investigation through proper administrative and legal channels. Universities have established procedures for inquiry, and the state has courts and law enforcement agencies for precisely this reason. What happened instead was mob justice, carried out openly and with impunity. Mob justice is not justice at all. It is collective lawlessness.
The response from the authorities raises further concern. Statements suggesting a teacher’s past political association as justification for public humiliation and confinement set a dangerous precedent. Allegations, regardless of who they involve, must be proven through evidence and due process. Political labelling cannot be an excuse for violence, nor can it replace the rule of law.
This is not an isolated incident. Similar acts of intimidation and assault against teachers have occurred at Dhaka University, Rajshahi University, and other campuses across the country. Over the past few months, the return of mob culture in educational institutions has become increasingly visible. Teachers are being targeted, silenced, and publicly harassed. The academic environment is steadily being poisoned by fear.
There is also a broader ideological dimension that cannot be ignored. Attacks on teachers and mainstream universities often align with forces hostile to modern and secular education. Islamist groups and their affiliates have long viewed public universities as obstacles to their vision of society. Undermining teachers, weakening institutions, and normalizing violence serve a clear purpose. If mainstream education collapses under pressure and intimidation, only narrow and dogmatic madrasa education systems will survive. That is a direct threat to Bangladesh’s pluralistic and progressive foundations.
Universities should be spaces of debate, learning, and intellectual disagreement, not arenas of coercion. When students act as enforcers, when administrators fail to protect faculty, and when violence is tolerated in the name of politics, the damage extends far beyond one individual. It erodes trust in institutions and signals that power, not law, decides guilt.
Taking the law into one’s own hands is a punishable crime. Assaulting teachers is not activism, it is criminality. If Bangladesh is serious about protecting education and upholding the rule of law, this entrenched culture of mob violence must be confronted decisively and without hesitation. Silence, delay, or selective enforcement will only embolden perpetrators and invite further attacks.
Bangladesh’s interim government has effectively functioned as a backer of Islamist fundamentalist forces. Its administrative machinery including key law enforcement and law and order institutions is widely accused of enabling or tacitly supporting miscreants who organize and unleash mob violence. Rather than serving as a neutral guarantor of public safety, the state apparatus is increasingly perceived as complicit or willfully indifferent, allowing mobs to operate with near impunity and accelerating the erosion of public trust in governance and the rule of law.
Attacks on teachers at universities, colleges, and schools are widely seen as part of a broader and deliberate effort to weaken secular, modern education and suppress critical thinking. These assaults are intended to intimidate educators, undermine academic freedom, and dismantle progressive educational institutions, while simultaneously creating space for the expansion and dominance of religious madrasa based education aligned with fundamentalist ideologies.
Parvez Hashem, Lawyer and Human Rights Defender.
