Dhaka:
Bangladesh has deployed border guards after deadly protests against a visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi rocked the country.
The violent protests, which began on Friday at the main mosque in the capital, Dhaka, spread to several key districts in the country, leaving five people dead and scores injured.
A spokesman for the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), which also acts as a reserve paramilitary force to maintain law and order, said it deployed troops from Friday night.
“With the instructions of the home ministry and in aid of the civil administration, required number of BGB has been deployed in different districts of the country,” Lieutenant Colonel Fayzur Rahman told a news agency on Saturday, without disclosing the numbers involved.
Rahman said there had been no reports of violence after their deployment.
Modi is in Bangladesh to attend its Golden Jubilee celebrations of independence and the birth centenary of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s founder and father of current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Rights groups have also called for an end to growing authoritarianism, including forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.
Police said four bodies of members of Hefazat-e-Islam, an Islamist group opposed to the visit of Modi, were brought to Chittagong Medical College Hospital after violence erupted at Hathazari, a rural town where the group’s main leaders are based.
A supporter of the group was also killed in clashes in the eastern border town of Brahmanbaria, another key bastion of Hefazat.
