Masudur Rahman Jony and Ahmad Islam Mahi. -Photo: Collected

By Syed Altefat Hossain

DHAKA, Feb 13, 2025 (BSS) – Only seven-year-old Ahmad Islam Mahi, who lost his father Masudur Rahman Jony in the July uprising, still misses his father badly since he was Mahi’s only resort after his mother got divorced and living in a separate place.

According to family members, Mahi’s parents got separated years back while his father was raising him with heavenly bond affection and never let Mahi to feel the void of his mother.

But a bullet exposed Mahi to a state of total wilderness emotionally, leaving him alone to be grown up without his parents’ affection.

Jony, a 38-year-old auto parts businessman, was shot dead in the Jatrabari area on August 5 when he along with thousand others attempted to break through police barricades to join the historic “March to Dhaka Programme” called by Anti-Discrimination Student Movement.

“My father used to take me to Madrasah and bring me home every day in the morning and gave me chocolates, biscuits and chips. Now I badly miss my father,” Mahi, a student of a local Qawmi Madrasah shared his grief with this correspondent at their rented Konapara area residence in the city.

He now stares at a blank future as he grows up seeing how other children are being loved by their father. His short memory with his father would haunt him throughout his life.   

At best he may recall his childhood memory when he would see a father hugging his son.

Mahi is now living with his grandmother Jannate Noor Momena (68) at the rented house while his uncles are taking care of them.

“As his mother left him when he was very little, his father raised him. Now if his mother calls him, he shows reluctance to talk to her,” Momena said in a sobbing tone.

Momena was observed traumatized as she refused to make any comment over her martyred son, saying she loses her sense whenever she recalls her son.       

According to Touhidul Hasan Riyon, an eyewitness of the fatal incident, Jony joined the procession in the Jatrabari area between 10.30am and 11am aimed at joining the historic “March to Dhaka Programme”.

“We, including Jony, were active in the anti-discrimination student movement from the beginning. Jony and I used to join the street movement together. On August 4, we also joined the movement together,” he said.

On August 5, Riyon said they were marching towards Shahbag to join the March to Dhaka Programme aimed at ousting the nearly 16 years of autocracy. But when they reached Jatrabari around 9.30am, they faced a strong police barricades to enter the city.

“It was drizzling around 9.30am on August 5 when police of Jatrabari Police Station started firing at the protesters and killed three persons apparently Madrasah students at Kajla Petrol Pump area,” he recalled the terrifying situation in the Jatrabari area hours before autocratic ruler Sheikh Hasina fled the country in face of the massive student-people uprising.

He recounted that whenever they were trying to enter the city with procession through in front of the Jatrabari Police Station, supporters of Awami League, Jubo League and Chhatra League opened fire at them from the right side of Dhaka-Chattogram Highway while police were firing indiscriminately from the front ruthlessly killing many people on the spot.

 “Around 12.30pm to 1pm, when we again wanted to cross Jatrabari under the banner of student-people, about four to five persons including Masudur Rahman Jony were shot dead on the spot on the right side of Dhaka-Chattogram Highway adjacent to Jatrabari storehouse,” Riyon recalled the fatal incident.

He said they rescued the bodies soon after police gave a pause and sent those to different hospitals by rickshaw-vans.

Noting that police continued random firing till 5.15pm on that day killing a huge number of people at Jatrabari, Riyon said, “Rescuing bodies and sending them to hospital were our daylong activities on that day”.

“We ourselves rescued a total of 70 bodies in two phases- from morning to noon and from afternoon to evening, from Jatrabari on August 5. But the number of casualties was huge,” he recalled.

Jony’s elder brother Abu Sayed recalled the moment when he received the devastating news and said, “When I was in the victory procession around 3pm, I received a call from one of Jony’s friends, who told me that Jony sustained bullet injuries”.

But he took it lightly thinking that it might have been minor. “However shortly after he called me again revealing the heartbreaking news that Jony was no more and his body was kept at Mitford Hospital”, he recalled with a heavy heart.

Sharing the obstacles they faced on the way to the Mitford Hospital, Sayed said he saw police firing indiscriminately at Jatrabari and Ray Saheb Bazar Mor in Old Dhaka.

“However, when one of my friends and I reached Ray Saheb Bazar Mor, one of my maternal cousins called me asking to go to their home in Old Dhaka, saying they took Jony’s body to their home,” he said.

Later, Sayed said, they laid Jony to his eternal rest at the Azimpur Graveyard in the city around 11pm on the same day with the token the hospital authority issued while handing over the body.

The family now demands trial for the loss of Jony and capital punishment for those responsible for killing Jony.

“We filed a case accusing 22 people including Sheikh Hasina and Obaidul Quader,” Abu Sayed said, adding, police exhumed the body on January 9 and carried out an autopsy on the same day.