, Sept. 12 -- Professor Sultana Akter, returning officer of Nawab Faizunnesa Hall and a teacher of the History Department at Jahangirnagar University, demanded that votes should be counted using the OMR machine and not by hand.

Speaking at the vote counting room on Friday at 4pm, she said, "I don't want to count votes over my colleague's dead body."

Prof Akter demanded that the vote counting should have stopped following the death of her colleague, Associate Professor Shamim Reza, during the counting process.

She also said that many polling officials were absent due to illness.

"I called one polling officer. He was sick and could not come. Without him, we cannot start counting votes at the hall," she added.

She claimed that the tradi...