DHAKA, Sept 27: Police used batons to disperse protesters and a political activist was gunned down as Bangladesh was shut down by an opposition-called strike on Saturday.

Police baton-charged some 50 women members of the Awami League who tried to break through a security barricade in Dhaka’s Dhanmandi area, where their party’s leader, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, lives.

Police detained some of the activists. Protesters are generally released at the end of strikes.

Elsewhere in Dhaka, three vehicles were torched on Friday night by suspected opposition activists, Channel I television reported. An Awami League leader in the southwestern Khulna district was gunned down by unknown assailants on Friday, officials said. Police said the victim, Tashar Hasan, was wanted for alleged past criminal activity.

Khulna has been tense since Aug 25 when the president of the Awami League’s local chapter in the industrial hub was shot dead along with a lawyer colleague and a rickshaw-puller. The town’s streets were deserted on Saturday.

Some 5,000 security personnel were deployed in Dhaka for the strike, which the Awami League called to protest what it says is worsening crime, corruption and rising prices of essential goods.

Haris Chowdhury, senior political adviser to Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, said the Awami League had showed itself to be politically bankrupt by hurting the country with a strike but not having a major issue to protest.

“We don’t know if Awami League policymakers will realize this truth soon,” he said in a statement.—AFP