Fahmin Zafar. Photo: Collected

 
By Babul Akhter Rana
 
NAOGAON, March 14, 2025 (BSS) – Fahmin Zafar, a second year student of Tongi Government College, told his family not to receive his body until Sheikh Hasina’s fall as he apprehended that he might embrace martyrdom in the July Uprising.
 
His apprehension came true as “he was shot dead by police” on July 18 last year in the capital city Dhaka’s Uttara area when he joined the student-led mass uprising under the banner of Anti-Discrimination Student Movement.
 
“If I die in the anti-autocratic movement, don’t receive my body until Hasina falls,” Fahmin’s grief-stricken mother, Shilpi Banu, vividly recalled her son’s advice before his martyrdom in the uprising.
 
According to his family members, Fahmin’s body was riddled with spray bullets. Soon after he fell onto the ground after bullets hit him, his friends took him to the Uttara Crescent Hospital where he breathed his last while undergoing treatment.
 
Fahmin Zafar, a permanent resident of Taratia village of Atrai upazila in Naogaon, was the youngest of four children of his parents. Fahmin was living with his mother at his maternal uncle's house in Dhaka as he enrolled into 11th grade at Tongi Government College. He had a dream of studying at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET).
 
“Fahmin was born on July 10, 2006. In that July, killer Hasina quenched her bloodthirstiness by killing my son,” Shilpi burst into tears.
 
The mourning mother recalled the obstacles she faced on the way to the hospital after getting news that Fahmin had been shot. “Members of Hasina's police force stopped me at every step and behaved indecently with me,” she said in an emotion choked voice.
 
“Even I had to lock myself into altercation with the police to reach the hospital. But by the time I reached the hospital my son was no more,” Shilpi wailed.
 
She recalled that at that time a duty doctor asked her to take the body quickly, saying that if she delayed, the police might make the body disappear.
 
“I can't sleep when I think of my son’s body, which was riddled with bullets fired by police. I want justice for killing my son,” Fahmin’s grieving mother said.
 
She also demanded justice for all the other people who were killed during the 2024 July Uprising.
 
“I want murderer Hasina to walk to the gallows,” Shilpi demanded.
 
Martyr Fahmin’s father Sheikh Abu Zafar said his son had a dream of studying at BUET and to shoulder the responsibility of the family after completing his study.
 
Abu Zafar recalled that he spoke to his son for the last time around 10 am over mobile phone on the day of his martyrdom.
 
“When my son informed me that he was in the movement at Uttara, I asked him to return home soon. My son, however, had returned home, but as a corpse,” he sighed a long breath of grief.
 
Fahmin’s mourning father recalled that someone called him from Fahmin’s mobile phone and told him that Fahmin fell in an accident. The person asked him to go to the hospital urgently.
 
As Abu Zafar was at their residence in Rajshahi at that time, he called his wife Shilpi Banu and his brother-in-law Moktadir in Dhaka and asked them to go to the hospital immediately.
 
After reaching hospital, Fahmin’s mother Shilpi broke down in tears and lost her consciousness seeing Fahmin’s lifeless body lying on a bed.
 
Later, she received the body from the hospital and went to their village home at Atrai in Naogaon the same night.
 
Fahmin was laid to his eternal rest at their family graveyard after Jum’ah prayers the next day (July 19). The villagers attended his namaj-e-janaza and demanded capital punishment for the killers of Fahmin.
 
Fahmin’s paternal uncle Sheikh Mosir Uddin said Fahmin was loved by everyone in the village.