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Police may investigate an alleged bombing attempt during an Indigenous rights protest in Perth, Western Australia, as a possible “terrorist” incident, following calls from Indigenous leaders and human rights groups for a more robust response from authorities.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported on Thursday that the incident was now being investigated by police as a “potential terrorist act”, two days after a 31-year-old man was charged with throwing a “homemade improvised explosive device” at an Invasion Day protest attended by thousands of people on Monday.

The device did not explode and there were no injuries, police said.

Police charged the man with throwing the device, which consisted of nails and ball bearings, into a large crowd during a protest on Australia’s national holiday, Australia Day, which is also referred to as Invasion Day, since it commemorates the 1788 arrival of a British fleet in Sydney Harbour.

A search of the suspect’s home was conducted, where it was further alleged that a combination of chemicals and materials consistent with the manufacture of homemade explosives was found, Western Australia Police Force said in a statement.

The suspect was charged with an attempt to cause harm and with making or possessing explosives under suspicious circumstances.

Hannah McGlade, a member of the Indigenous Noongar community, told national broadcaster ABC on Thursday that it appeared police had “heard our concerns” regarding the attack.

“A lot of people have been adding concern that it hasn’t been looked at properly as a hate crime or even possibly as a terror crime,” said McGlade, an associate professor of law at Curtin University in Australia.

Indigenous people felt “absolute horror that so many people could have been injured and killed at an event like this, a peaceful gathering”, McGlade added.

The Human Rights Law Centre also called for “the violent, racist attack on First Nations people” to be “investigated as an act of terrorism or hate crime”.

“Reports by rally organisers and witnesses raise serious questions about [Western Australia] Police’s response and communication with organisers, both before and after the attack,” the legal group said in a statement.

The group also said reports that police failed “to address credible threats received ahead of the rally” should be “fully and independently investigated”.

Police alleged that the suspect removed the device from his bag and threw it from a walkway into a crowd of more than 2,000 people during the Invasion Day protest in Perth on Monday.

Alerted by a member of the public, police took the man into custody and bomb response officers inspected the device, the Western Australia Police Force said in a statement.

Bangladesh’s toppled leader Sheikh Hasina has denounced her country’s election next month after her party was barred from participating in the polls, raising fears of wider political division and possible unrest.

In a message published by The Associated Press news agency on Thursday, Hasina said “a government born of exclusion cannot unite a divided nation.”

Hasina, who was sentenced to death in absentia for her crackdown on a student uprising in 2024 that killed hundreds of people and led to the fall of her 15-year government, has been sharpening her critique of the interim government of Nobel Peace winner Muhammad Yunus in recent days, as the election that will shape the nation’s next chapter looms.

“Each time political participation is denied to a significant portion of the population, it deepens resentment, delegitimises institutions and creates the conditions for future instability,” the former leader, who is living in exile in India, warned in her email to the AP.

She also claimed that the current Bangladesh government deliberately disenfranchised millions of her supporters by excluding her party – the former governing Awami League – from the election.

More than 127 million people in Bangladesh are eligible to vote in the February 12 election, widely seen as the country’s most consequential in decades and the first since Hasina’s removal from power after the mass uprising.

Yunus’s government is overseeing the process, with voters also weighing a proposed constitutional referendum on sweeping political reforms.

Campaigning started last week, with rallies in the capital, Dhaka, and elsewhere.

Yunus returned to Bangladesh and took over three days after Hasina fled to India on August 5, 2024, following weeks of violent unrest.

He has promised a free and fair election, but critics question whether the process will meet democratic standards and whether it will be genuinely inclusive after the ban on Hasina’s Awami League.

There are also concerns over security and uncertainty surrounding the referendum, which could bring about major changes to the constitution.

Yunus’s office said in a statement to the AP that security forces will ensure an orderly election and will not allow anyone to influence the outcome through coercion or violence. International observers and human rights groups have been invited to monitor the process, the statement added.

Tarique Rahman, the son of former prime minister and Hasina rival, Khaleda Zia, returned to Bangladesh after his mother’s death in December.

Rahman, the acting chairman of Khaleda’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party, is a strong candidate to win the forthcoming election.

On Friday, Hasina made her first public speech since her ouster, telling a packed press club in Delhi that Bangladesh “will never experience free and fair elections” under Yunus’s watch.

Her remarks on Friday were broadcast online and streamed live to more than 100,000 of her supporters.

The statement was criticised by Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which issued a statement saying it was “surprised” and “shocked” that India had allowed her to make a public address.

Bangladesh has been asking India to extradite Hasina, but New Delhi has yet to comment on the request.