In her mid-20s, Asiya finds herself saddled with a life she never wanted.
In a cruel twist of fate, she became a widow four days ago. Her
husband Faruk Hossain, 32, is one of the four people killed in police
firing on a protest in Tangail's Kalihati on Friday.
A three-wheeler driver, Faruk was the sole breadwinner of the five-member family.
Apart from her own, she is left with three mouths to feed -- an
eight-year-old autistic son, a three-year-old daughter and her
mother-in-law. She does not know what to do now.
"My whole world ... has gone dark," she told these correspondents when they visited her house in Kushtia village on Monday.
She was standing in front of a corrugated-sheet built room.
On the fateful day, her husband went to buy some rice from a store at
Kalihati Bus Stand, which he did, but could not bring it home. Instead,
it was his bullet-hit body that arrived home. ''It's the police who killed my husband," Asiya broke the silence,
with her eyes fixed on the ground. "Now it's the government that has to
take our responsibility."Fourteen-year-old Shyamol Das had started working at a barber shop in
Salenka village of Kalihati to help his poverty-stricken five-member
family.
Like other days, he was coming home for lunch on Friday. His mother
had cooked his favourite fish dish. But Shyamol did not get to eat it.
"My son was watching the protests from a distance. But police dragged
my son from there and shot him dead," his father Robi Das told The
Daily Star.
Shamim, another victim, was preparing to fly to Saudi Arabia for work
after Eid-ul-Azha. But his dream of a better life was shattered by
police bullets, although he didn't even join the protest.
"He was a small trader. He ran a shop in Hamidpur market. On that
day, he went to the bus stand area for some work," said Shamim's widow
Anjumanara Bithi.
"When police opened fire, he got scared and hid himself in a nearby madrasa. But police caught him from there and killed him.
"They didn't just stop there. When my husband was taken to Tangail
Sadar Hospital, police repeatedly prevented the doctors from treating
him," alleged Bithi, demanding punishment to the law enforcers involved
in this.
Left with two kids below the age of six, and none to support the
family, Bithi has no idea how they would survive. "To whom should we go
now? Where's justice?"
Rubel Islam, 18, was admitted to Dhaka Medical College Hospital with bullet injuries in the head on Friday. He died on Sunday.
An HSC student, Rubel used to work at a computer shop to bear his
educational expenses. On Friday afternoon, he went to Khalihati Bus
Stand on hearing that a protest was going on.
When these correspondents visited his house at Dakkhin Betdoba
village on Monday evening, they saw a coffin outside the house. Rubel's
body hadn't yet arrived from Dhaka.
His mother was wailing, holding Rubel's photograph against her chest. She was losing consciousness frequently.
"The government killed my innocent son ... but saved the rapists," she cried, before falling unconscious.
Abdul Aziz, brother-in-law of Rubel, accused municipal mayor Ansar Ali of interfering even with the funeral.
"He came here this morning and warned us against using loudspeakers
for Rubel's janaza. He also asked us to bury the body immediately after
it reaches here."
Demanding a judicial investigation into the killings, Aziz said, "We
elected the government for establishing good governance, not for seeing
dead bodies of our family members."
