New Delhi: Protests continued to take place in Bangladesh on Friday (December 19) afternoon, a day after they erupted in response to the death of youth leader Sharif Osman Hadi and morphed into violence targeting newspaper houses, a prominent cultural organisation as well as an Indian consulate.Hadi, who was a prominent face of the 2024 protests that brought down the Sheikh Hasina government, succumbed to his injuries in a hospital in Singapore on Thursday.His body arrived in Dhaka on Friday afternoon and the interim government announced that his funeral will be held on Saturday on the parliament premises.Dhaka has condemned the violence that has followed Hadi’s death and called on citizens to “resist all forms of mob violence committed by a few fringe elements”.Indian diplomatic missions in Bangladesh are under a security blanket against the backdrop of Hadi and numerous protesters’ antipathy towards New Delhi.Shortly after his death was announced on Thursday, groups of protesters stormed, vandalised and set fire to the offices of leading Bengali newspaper Prothom Alo as well as the English-language Daily Star.Nurul Kabir too was assaulted outside the Daily Star‘s Dhaka office when he went there in his capacity as president of the Bangladesh Editors’ Council upon hearing of the attack on the newspaper’s premises, his newspaper New Age reported.Early on Friday, protesters also damaged the building of the cultural organisation Chhayanaut in Dhaka’s Dhanmondi area. An office of Hasina’s former ruling and currently banned Awami League party in Rajshahi was reportedly demolished as well.United News of Bangladesh had reported that at least four people, including two police personnel, were injured when protesters clashed with police outside the Indian assistant high commission in Chattogram.People stage a protest over the death of Sharif Osman Hadi in Dhaka on December 19, 2025. Photo: Screenshot from PTI video.The interim government in Dhaka condemned the violence in a statement on Friday afternoon.“This is a critical moment in our nation’s history when we are making a historic democratic transition. We cannot and must not allow it to be derailed by those few who thrive on chaos and reject peace,” the interim government said, referring to the upcoming general election scheduled for February 12.Those elections and the accompanying referendum “are not merely political exercises” but a “solemn national commitment” that is “inseparable from the dream” for which Hadi ‘sacrificed his life’, the government added.Addressing the journalists of Prothom Alo, the Daily Star and New Age – editors of the former two whom Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus had previously spoken to over the phone – Dhaka said: “We stand with you. We are deeply sorry for the terror and violence you have endured … Attacks on journalists are attacks on truth itself. We promise you full justice.”“We wholeheartedly condemn lynching of a Hindu man in Mymensingh. There is no space for such violence in new Bangladesh. The perpetrators of this heinous crime will not be spared,” it also said.In a separate statement, culture adviser Mustafa Sarwar Faruquee condemned the attacks on the newspaper houses as well as Chhayanaut as “undoubtedly a conspiracy to sabotage the elections”.“Today, we were supposed to talk about Shaheed [martyr] Osman Hadi. Today, we were supposed to be in mourning. Who has diverted the topic? Who attacked Prothom Alo, the Daily Star, Chhayanaut? Those who did it do not want a democratic transition in Bangladesh,” he was quoted as saying.Following the attack on the aforementioned organisations, the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy suspended its programmes indefinitely, bdnews24.com reported.Prothom Alo and the Daily Star, both of which were unable to print physical editions on Friday, condemned the vandalism and arson of their offices that posed grave physical danger to their employees and said they were perpetrated by certain quarters wishing to exploit Hadi’s killing for their own ends.“Our colleagues, trapped on the roof, feared for their lives as a mob vandalised one floor after another and set fire to the lower floors,” the Daily Star said, adding that at one point the smoke made it hard for its staffers to breathe. Prothom Alo noted that the blaze “gutted” its office and that “the assets and valuable documents stored there were reduced to ashes”.Bangladesh Army stands guard at Prothom Alo’s office as it is set ablaze by protesters. Photo: AP/PTI.While Prothom Alo noted that the police failed to arrive at its premises before the vandals even as they had sought security, the Daily Star noted “with concern that a better coordinated response [by the authorities] would have meant less trauma for our trapped colleagues who spent several hours in grave uncertainty in a mortal fear”.The dailies also said the attacks were more broadly an assault on independent media and the freedom of speech, a sentiment that was echoed by the Editors’ Council and the Newspapers Owners’ Association in a joint statement.A name board of the Daily Star lies on the floor amid rubble after its office was vandalised by protesters on December 19, 2025.Meanwhile on Friday afternoon, protests continued at Dhaka’s Shahbagh – which some Islamist parties and Dhaka University Central Students’ Union leaders called ‘Hadi Square’ – as well as in the northeastern city of Sylhet and in Chattogram.Slogans raised at the protest included “agents of India, beware” and “stop Indian aggression”, the Dhaka Business Standard reported.Security around Indian diplomatic premises in Bangladesh has been stepped up, with the army reportedly deployed to guard missions across the country.Despite the heightened precautions, there is continued concern in New Delhi over the situation on the ground. It is learned that there is no plan at this stage to evacuate Indian diplomatic personnel.According to sources, premises linked to the Indian high commission figured on a list that was circulated online among certain groups identifying locations that were to be targeted. The list also included sites that were later attacked by mobs, among them the offices of two newspaper houses as well as cultural organisations Chhayanaut and Udichi. It also named the Indira Gandhi Cultural Centre (IGCC).The original IGCC building in Dhaka’s Dhanmondi area had been vandalised and set on fire in the violence following the toppling of the Hasina government in August last year, after which the centre has been operating from an alternative location.A key leader of the July-August 2024 uprising against Hasina’s regime, Hadi was a spokesperson of the right-wing cultural group Inquilab Mancha that has been at the forefront of a campaign to disband the Awami League. He had planned to contest the February general election as an independent candidate.He and the Inquilab Mancha were also reportedly vehement critics of India, where Hasina remains in exile – something that has been a point of contention between various groups in Bangladesh, including the interim government, and New Delhi.Yunus had condoled his death as marking “an irreplaceable loss in the nation’s political and democratic landscape” and promised to show no leniency against those who killed him.“In this moment of grief, let us transform the ideals and sacrifices of Martyr Sharif Osman Hadi into strength. Let us hold firm to patience, ignore misinformation and rumours and refrain from any hasty decisions”, said Yunus, who in an implicit reference to the Awami League also called for “patience, restraint, courage and foresight, so that the enemies of elections and democracy – the fascist terrorist evil forces – can be decisively defeated”.This article has been updated with more information and edited to correct the circumstances under which Nurul Kabir was assaulted.