A canteen leaseholder at Bangladesh’s prestigious Dhaka University has been fired for serving beef to Hindu students and hurting their religious sentiments, a media report said today.
The university has formed a committee to investigate the incident. The committee has been asked to submit a report within a week.
Zakir Hossain, a class-four employee who became the leaseholder of Faculty of Fine Arts canteen, was expelled on
Sunday for ‘creating disorder’ on ‘Pahela Baishakh’ when thousands of students gathered on the campus to celebrate the Bangla New Year.
The students of the faculty said beef was never allowed in their canteen considering the fact that it is ‘forbidden’ for Hindus.
“He was running the canteen without permission (from the authorities),” Acting Proctor Amzad Ali was quoted as saying by bdnews24.
The students ordered Tehari for breakfast after working overnight to prepare for the ‘Mangal Shobhajatra’ procession.
Zakir admitted to making the Tehari with beef, but alleged that Bangladesh Chhatra League leader ‘Sohag’ and his
associates in the Pahela Baishakh Celebration Committee ‘intentionally’ ordered the beef Tehari and fed it to their
Hindu ‘co-students’, the report said.
Zakir said they did so because he did not agree to their demand to pay extortion money.
Meanwhile, ripple effects of the crackdown on illegal abattoirs in Uttar Pradesh are being felt in West Bengal as the beef dealers here are complaining of a decline in business and exports.
The supply of meat, mostly buffalo meat, from Uttar Pradesh has come down to a great extent and as a result, the thriving beef-packaging industry here has been affected, Mohammed Ali, president of Calcutta Beef Dealers Association, told PTI.
