The tables had turned: Yesterday’s victims of brutal suppression were today’s perpetrators of brutal revenge.

       Mobs wielding bamboo sticks and pipes thrashed supporters of Bangladesh’s toppled ruling party on Thursday, preventing their first major gathering since their leader, Sheikh Hasina, fled the country last week.

       The sticks arrived in sacks on the back of electric rickshaws, the pipes as flagpoles that soon became weapons as their flags were removed. The attackers were largely supporters of opposition parties that had endured abuse and violence from the former prime minister’s party, the Awami League. They beat anyone they suspected of belonging to the party, flogging their legs before dragging them with shirts ripped and faces bloodied.

       The student protesters who rallied to oust Ms. Hasina have become de facto police officers on the streets. But on Thursday, they were mostly on the sidelines, and their unanswered pleas for calm laid bare what they have called one of their chief concerns.

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       Into the vacuum, they worry, will walk the established political opposition, not only to unleash revenge, but also to restore the kind of dynastic politics that defined Ms. Hasina’s party, too. Breaking the cycles of vengeance that have afflicted Bangladesh through many turbulent periods is a monumental task for the interim government now running the country.

       The purging of her party from the government has continued over the week and a half since Ms. Hasina was toppled and fled to India. Protesters are calling for the former prime minister to face justice for the deaths of about 500 people during the monthlong uprising, most of them in the crackdown that she unleashed.

       At least two senior members of Ms. Hasina’s government were arrested by the security forces on Tuesday as they tried to flee the country by boat. When they appeared in court on Wednesday, their opponents prevented their lawyers from defending them, local news media reported, continuing a pattern of injustice that had long bent to those in power.

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       Counterprotesters prepared to head off Sheikh Hasina’s supporters on Thursday.Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

       The chief of Bangladesh’s army also appeared to confirm reports that some leaders of Ms. Hasina’s party were being housed in its quarters, saying the military would shelter anyone facing the threat of “extrajudicial action.”

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       “We have given shelter to those whose lives are under threat,” the army chief, Gen. Waker-uz-Zaman, told reporters on Tuesday. “No matter what party, religion or opinion, we will do this.”

       Officials in the interim government, which is led by the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, said they were facing multiple crises while trying to carry out a more fundamental overhaul of the state.

       The caretaker government has struggled to get police officers to return to work after they had vanished in the face of retaliatory mob violence for their role in the protesters’ deaths. The country’s long-persecuted Hindu minority has been gripped by fear of increased attacks.

       The economy, largely reliant on the garment export industry, has also been on a downward spiral, with foreign reserves dwindling.

       Bangladesh’s interim leaders have said the country needs “a strong element of reconciliation” to avoid falling into the usual violent cycle. But what shape such a reconciliation might take is still being figured out by an overwhelmed week-old government.

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       “We have formed this advisory board standing on the dead bodies of no less than 500 people,” said Rizwana Hasan, a member of the cabinet and a spokeswoman for the interim government. “It’s no easy task. It’s very depressing.”

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       Bangladesh’s interim government, led by Muhammad Yunus, faces multiple crises.Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

       The interim government must pick up the pieces of a state in near-total collapse, while also preparing for an election that the organized political parties will soon be demanding. Establishing security is a prerequisite, and that has been made more difficult by the retreat of the country’s 200,000-strong police force, which was deeply politicized under Ms. Hasina.

       “Police has also lost its confidence to do policing — that’s the reason they could not even come out of barracks, because they thought the people would bash them to death,” said Muniruzzaman, a retired general in the Bangladesh Army and the president of the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies. “And the people have lost the trust.”

       He said the interim government needed to convince the political parties that crucial reforms must be carried out before a free, credible election could be held.

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       Moving forward will be difficult for a nation still coming to terms with its past.

       Much of the action in recent days has been around the home of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s founding leader and Ms. Hasina’s father. Four years after Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan in 1971, Sheikh Mujib was killed at this house in a military coup, along with much of his family. Bangladesh’s short history since then has been marked by coups and counter-coups.

       The reign of Ms. Hasina over the past 15 years was increasingly shaped by revenge for the massacre of her family. Everything she did was in the name of her father, whose face was plastered everywhere.

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       Burned vehicles at the house of Bangladesh’s founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in Dhaka.Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

       In the hours after Ms. Hasina fled the country, a mob believed to have been led by her political opponents vandalized the house, looted it and set it on fire.

       Since then, the home has become a sad museum for the country’s layered trauma. The staircase where Sheikh Mujib was killed in 1975, with nine bullet holes marked on the wall, is now covered in soot from recently lit fires.

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       The student protesters tried to distance themselves from the vandalism, arriving in large numbers to clean the house and collect what was left of the family archives. They handed to the army scraps of diplomatic correspondence, a deck of antique cards with naked pictures, and the packaging of an old shampoo that declared “Really Does Clear Dandruff.”

       “I am feeling very sorry,” Mohammed Haroun Rashid, 69, said as he held back tears while going through the burned house. “This is barbaric.”

       He said that Ms. Hasina had done a great deal for the development of the country, but he admitted that “she had lost it” by turning autocratic. Another older man, a senior court lawyer, was shaking in anger at the sight of the damage. He also highlighted Ms. Hasina’s development work.

       Aahir Amin, 18, who had on plastic gloves and was helping with the cleaning, listened quietly. He said nothing as the men finished their monologues.

       “We are not denying the development,” he said after they left. “But you can’t deny everything else she did.”

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       He added: “He is entitled to his free speech.”

       On Thursday, the scenes unfolding in Dhaka, the capital, weren’t so understanding.

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       Police officers are starting to trickle back into the streets after having vanished for days.Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

       The Awami League demonstrators had planned to gather at Sheikh Mujib’s old house to mark 49 years since his assassination. But as they tried to mobilize on Thursday morning, the roads leading to the site were blocked by the mobs of people, who sought to prevent journalists from documenting the violence that ensued.

       Mohammad Shamsuddin, a member of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party — one of the parties long repressed by the ousted government — said its followers would not let the Awami League gather while the blood from Ms. Hasina’s crackdown was still fresh. He said Ms. Hasina must face trial.

       “Everyone has the right to protest,” he said. “But no one can protest on the side of the killers.”

       The situation began to calm down in the afternoon, as the mobs were replaced by the student protesters, many of whom had patrolled the streets late into the night and had just awakened around noon. The tense scenes of earlier in the day yielded to a dance party not far from Sheikh Mujib’s home.

       Young men danced under a large banner that read “Dictator-Free Day.” The music they danced to was further salt on the wounds: The singer of many of the songs was a former lawmaker in Ms. Hasina’s now-toppled party.