By Syed Altefat Hossain
   
DHAKA, Jan 12, 2025 (BSS) – On the 22nd day of his advent in the world, two events happened, an autocratic government was toppled in a massive uprising and secondly, most importantly for himself, his father died, not a natural death but was beaten to death.
   
Mohammad Jawad, as the baby was named by the family, would grow seeing how other children are being loved by their father, a feeling he would never experience as his father embraced martyrdom on August 5 when he joined the victory procession following the downfall of the autocracy.
   
At best he may feel, had his father been alive, he would have received the same affection when he would see a father hugging his son.
   
Saiful Islam Shanto, a 26-year-old shareholder of a knit factory worker, had to leave this world leaving behind his wife Falguni Yasmin, a woman only in her mid 20s, and the only kid, Jawad.
   
Shanto’s death was brought an extra pain for the family and dear ones as he was killed when the autocracy was fallen and he went out of house to join the victory celebrations.
   
His father Abdul Matin, 62, and elder brother Hafiz Al Faisal, 34, said they both were still in dark why Shanto was beaten to death and who killed him in front of Jatrabari Police Station.
   
“I was on the balcony of my father’s (Shanto’s in law) house with my baby on the lap at about 4.30 pm (near her father in law’s residence) when my husband appeared in front of the house and told me from the street that he was going to join the celebration,” Yasmin said and then burst into tears.
   
After a long pause she managed to check her heavy emotion and said in a grief stricken voice “he (Shanto) saw our son on my lap for the last time from the street”.
   
She said Shanto told her he would come to his father in law’s house returning from the victory procession but “he never returned” and somebody told her at around 5.20pm he was killed.
   
“I lost everything . . . He will never return . . . I don’t know what my son’s future is . . . He lost his father before understanding anything,” Yasmin wailed.
   
The couple was blessed with the baby on July 14 in 2024, nearly two years after they were locked in the nuptial cord.
   
“What was my husband’s crime? Why has he been killed?” Yasmin wept as some members of both the families and some neighbours were seated in the drawing room.
   
Yasmin demanded capital punishment for those who killed her husband.
   
Shanto was second among three children of Matin and 47-year-old Nilufa (one name) with two others being Faisal, a shop employee at Kaptan Bazar at Gulistan area and Fatema Begum, a married woman who lives elsewhere.
   
Shanto’s family is a joint unit where his parents live with their two sons, their wives and the grandchildren at their Mirhazirbagh area of Jatrabari.
   
“There is nothing heavier for a father than the coffin of his son,” Matin just said, expressing his agony.
   
Faisal recalled that when thousands of people were going to Shahbag to celebrate the ouster of Sheikh Hasina regime, his wife too wanted to join the celebration at Shahbag.
   
But the couple went up to Dholaipar area and then decided to return home just when he saw Shanto was coming out of the house to join the victory procession and shortly thereafter one of Shanto’s friends called him asking to go to Dholaipar.
   
The friend told him Shanto was severely beaten by some people but when Faisal reached the scene he was informed that his brother was taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH).
 
“As terrible situation was prevailing across the city streets due to indiscriminate firing of law enforcement agency members, I somehow managed a rickshaw to reach Dhaka Medical (hospital) where I found Shanto’s friends were present,” Faisal said.
   
“When I asked them what my brother’s condition was, they said he was no more.”
   
The words, Faisal said, entirely bewildered him before the shock gripped him as he saw Shanto’s body lying on the floor outside of the DMCH emergency ward.
   
“We never let him understand what sadness is,” Faisal said.
    
He said he just decided to take his brother’s body home without any medical document as nothing was working at the hospital at that time and no such issue (medical document) appeared in my mind”.
 
Shanto’s lifeless body reached home after the Magrib prayers.

He was laid to rest at Mirhazirbag Boro Bari Graveyard the same evening.