By Syed Altefat Hossain

Saiful Islam Tanmoy, a 22-year-old shop employee, was so excited over his younger sister’s wedding ceremony scheduled on August 9. But the fate didn’t favour him. He was shot dead on August 5, just four days ahead of the much cherished family ceremony.

Despite his hectic engagements for the function, the call of duty for the country prompted him to leave his house in the morning to join the “March to Dhaka Programme” at Shahbag called by Anti-Discrimination Student Movement to challenge the autocratic rule of Sheikh Hasina.

The cause that drove him out of his house on the outskirts of the capital was achieved hours later. But he did not return home alive. He could not witness the success of the blood-stained campaign either.

Instead, Tanmoy’s father Safiqul Islam Rana (48), a ticket master of a bus company, found his son’s lifeless body in a pile of corpses at the morgue of Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH).

According to the compatriots, comrades and doctors Tanmoy was shot in the head at Kutubkhali area of Jatrabari around 12.15pm while he tried to break through police barricades along with thousands to reach Shahbagh.

“My son was so excited about the wedding ceremony of his younger sister - Nargis Sultana. He had planned to prepare everything for his sister’s big day,” Tanmoy’s grief stricken mother Rebeka Sultana (42) said as tears rolled down her eyes.

Talking to this BSS correspondent about her martyred son at her father’s Kutubkhali residence, Rebeka burst into tears and said Tanmoy’s unfulfilled wish of organising the wedding ceremony would haunt “us (family) forever”.

Rebeka said as the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement launched the campaign Tanmoy used to join the street protests for quota reforms from the day one. He sustained rubber bullet injuries on July 26.

“I saw the scars of rubber bullets on his back two days later (July 28) and asked him not to join the street protest. But he did not listen to me,” said the ailing mother trying to explain in her way the unshakable resolve of her son.

During one of those terrifying days, she said, Tanmoy told her two of his friends were killed in the street protest as she again tried to debar him from leaving the house.

“Ammu, my two friends have been killed. When we all have to die, it’s better to embrace martyrdom,” Rebeka recalled her son telling her on that day.

On August 5 Tanmoy left their rented house at Rasulpur area of Jatrabari around 10am, promising to return soon for breakfast.

“He said ‘I am coming back soon to have my breakfast’ . . . but he never returned,” Rebeka wailed.

Tanmoy’s father Shafiqul Islam recalled that he received a call around 1.15 pm from someone at private health care centre who asked him to go to the facility at Jatrabari area.

“(Initially) I refused to go there saying I was waiting for my son to return for lunch as he left home without having his breakfast,” Islam said recalling as telling the unknown caller before cutting off the phone.

But his phone rang again when the same caller insisted him to visit the Delta Health Care as his son was taken there with bullet wounds while he found the number from a piece of paper in his pocket.

Islam said after receiving the second call he rushed to the facility leaving his wife in the dark about their son but as he arrived at the facility, he was informed that Tanmoy was transferred to DMCH.

Tanmoy’s father said he instantly realised that his son was no more and went straight to the DMCH morgue.

“I saw a pile of bodies . . . I was trying to find which one those was of Tanmoy and eventually found him,” Islam said breaking into tears.

The morgue employees told him Tanmoy was shot twice in the head – one bullet pierced through the side of his head and the other remained inside.

The DMCH emergency unit staff handed him over a handwritten piece of paper where a hospital registration number, his name and age were written without any elaboration.

He received the body without autopsy and it was near impossible to perform the medical protocol for unnatural deaths on that day.

Tanmoy was laid to his eternal rest at Dania Graveyard after Maghrib prayers the same evening, when the country was celebrating the ouster of Sheikh Hasina regime.

According to his father, Tanmoy was the eldest of four siblings – a brother and two sisters – and “he was a pillar for the family”.

Islam said as a ticket master of a bus company, his meagre income was not enough to run the family and therefore Tanmoy appeared as a saviour during the corona pandemic when he managed to get himself employed at a shop to provide monitory support to the family.

He said before joining his job as a shopkeeper, Tanmoy was a student of a madrasah when he memorised eight Paras (chapters) of the holy Quran.

“He was the stick of the family,” Islam said recalling he took the job at a moment when the family was struggling to make ends meet.

Tanmoy’s death was just not the loss of a family member, who was a victim of mindless killing spree. It was something more which exposed the family to a state of total wilderness – emotionally as well as financially.

His grief stricken father lost his job as he could not rejoin his job because of the heartache after losing his son, forcing the entire family to their ancestral home at Debidwar of Cumilla as it is not in a position to pay the house rent.

Safiqul said he is now struggling to manage the livelihood for the family and education cost of his son Rafi Islam Tamim (10), a fourth grader, and daughter Sanjida Islam Shifa (6), a first grader.

He said, however, the financial assistance from the July Shaheed Smriti Foundation and Jamaat-e-Islami has emerged as a godsend for him to meet the immediate family needs in the aftermath of his son’s tragic death.

Safiqul is now planning to cultivate on a small piece of land in his ancestral home in Debidwar Upazila in Cumilla to make ends meet.

“I raised my son with most affection for 22 years. But Sheikh Hasina took my son away from me forever,” he said.

The family demanded capital punishment of those who were involved with killing of my son.

calls for a fair trial to hold the perpetrators of the autocratic government including Sheikh Hasina for the loss of Tanmoy and countless others.

Tanmoy’s weeping mother said “only a mother knows how painful it is to raise a child. I raised my son amid acute poverty. But he went far away from me, leaving his dreams behind”.

“I want Sheikh Hasina to be tried publicly and held accountable for my son’s death,” Rebeka added.