Dhaka, Aug 12 Family members of the victims of the Bangladesh Air Force fighter jet crash in Dhaka have threatened to launch a larger protest if the investigation drags on, the perpetrators escape justice, or their demands are not swiftly implemented.
The warning was issued on Tuesday after the families of the victims formed a human chain at the Milestone School and College campus in Dhaka, raising their eight-point demand, local media reported.
"Today we did not come to fight. We came to form a human chain. The school authorities, not even a single teacher, came to us. We are parents who have lost children. No one came and said, 'Come, let me talk to you'," Bangladesh’s leading Bengali daily Prothom Alo quoted the protesting parents as saying.
The parents also accused a teacher of indulging in physical altercation with them as they were forming the human chain. As a result, they added one more point to their previous eight-point demand, calling for the removal of the accused teacher.
The demands of the family members include a proper investigation into the incident and ensuring justice; and stopping the coaching business in all educational institutions across the country, including Milestone School. Additionally, they called for relocating educational institutions from runways, providing compensation to the dead and injured, and removal and trial of head teacher Khadija within 72 hours.
They also demanded that the authorities show the school's CCTV footage and move Air Force training to uninhabited areas.
"The children who died here are all children of coaching... A large part of the coaching goes to them; they get a large amount... I don't think there is as much pressure given for coaching as there is in this school,” said the mother of one of the victims.
“Teachers say your child cannot study in class. Your son is not doing well in studies. They torture him mentally in various ways, forcing him to undergo coaching like this,” said Mohammad Abu Shahin, father of a deceased student Borhan Uddin Bappi.
According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media division of the South Asian nation's Armed Forces, the Bangladesh Air Force's Chinese-made F-7 BGI training aircraft took off at 1:06 p.m. (local time) on July 21 and crashed into the Milestone School and College building in Dhaka's Uttara around 1.30 p.m.
Reports suggest that over 34 people, mostly children, were killed and several others were injured in the tragic plane crash.
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