The textbooks for the current academic year, published by the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB), mention two different dates for the death of Abu Sayed, who was martyred during an anti-discrimination student movement in Rangpur.
This inconsistency appears in two textbooks for the same grade.
The English textbook for grades 9-10, in the chapter "Graffiti," mentions that unarmed Abu Sayed was martyred in Rangpur on July 17, 2024, by police gunfire. On the other hand, the Bengali Literature textbook for the same grade, in the chapter titled "Our New Glory," states: "On July 16, the movement gained its most impactful and iconic image—Abu Sayed facing police gunfire in Rangpur."
General Secretary of the Bangladesh Teachers and Staff Alliance (Bangladesh Shikkhok Karmochari Oikyojot), Md Zakir Hossain, expressed his dismay, saying: “The entire country knows the exact date when Abu Sayed was mercilessly shot by the police. How could the textbook authors not know? It seems there was no coordination between the editors of the different books.”
Abu Sayed, a student of the 12th batch in the English Department of Begum Rokeya University, was a key coordinator of the movement. He was killed on July 16 during the anti-discrimination student protests.
A photograph of Abu Sayed standing on the street with his arms outstretched at the moment he was shot spread across the media, prompting widespread protests. This movement eventually culminated in a mass uprising, leading to the then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina stepping down and fleeing to India on August 5.
On August 18, Abu Sayed's elder brother, Ramzan Ali, filed a case at the Rangpur Metropolitan Magistrate’s Tajhat Amli Court, naming 16 individuals, including police officers, university administration officials, and teachers, as well as 30-35 unidentified persons, as accused.
Meanwhile, in the essay "We Will Not Forget You" in the fifth-grade textbook *Amar Bangla*, there was another error. The name of Nafisa Hossain, an HSC candidate from Sahajuddin Sarkar High School in Tongi, who was killed in the July protests, was incorrectly printed as "Nahian." However, this error was later corrected in the online version.
When asked about the issue, NCTB Chairman Professor A.K.M. Riazul Hasan acknowledged that the date of Abu Sayed’s death was inaccurately presented in the English textbook but correctly stated in the Bengali Literature textbook. He added, “We are fixing these errors in the online copies and will issue a correction notice for all the mistakes.”