When the fire was finally extinguished after the Bangladesh Air Force training aircraft crashed into Milestone School and College last July, six-year-old Kafi Ahmed Taif had survived.
A year later, survival remains only the beginning of his story.
The Class VI student still undergoes monthly hospital visits, laser therapy, physiotherapy and psychological counselling. His hands swell without treatment. Skin grafts continue to heal. The pain can become so intense during therapy that his father cannot bear to stay in the room.
For many of the children who escaped one of Bangladesh’s deadliest aviation disasters, recovery has become a second battle -- one fought not against flames, but against lifelong physical injuries, emotional trauma and mounting financial hardship.
Kafi’s father, Miraj Ahmed, still remembers the phone call that transformed an ordinary working day into a nightmare.
He had dropped his son at Milestone School and College in Uttara that morning before leaving for work in Dhanmondi.
Kafi’s mother later arrived with their younger daughter to collect him after class.
A teacher asked them to wait another 10 minutes because Kafi had been kept back.
Those 10 minutes changed everything.
While waiting near the school grounds, the Bangladesh Air Force FT-7 BGI training aircraft crashed into the campus.
Kafi was trapped inside his classroom.
His mother ran into the smoke-filled building searching for her son.
He was pulled out alive, but his face, ears, throat and both hands had suffered severe burns.
By the time Miraj Ahmed reached Uttara, his son had already been taken to Crescent Hospital before being transferred to the National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery.
“My son was writhing in pain in the ambulance,” he told Dhaka Tribune.
“Not just my child, I saw many other children suffering the same way.”
The horror deepened at the Burn Institute.
“Parents were screaming everywhere. Children had burns on their hands, legs, faces and heads. The smell of burnt flesh filled the hospital. I will never forget that.”
Doctors first spent 24 hours determining whether Kafi’s airway had been damaged.
Then came another anxious wait to determine whether his eyesight could be saved.
“I kept asking him what colour shirt I was wearing,” Miraj recalled. “When he answered correctly, I finally felt some relief.”
Kafi remained in hospital for more than two months.
Doctors performed skin grafts using tissue taken from his leg to rebuild both hands and operated on his right ear, eventually restoring his hearing.
But returning home did not mean the suffering had ended.
“The pain was unbearable,” his father said. “He would tell me, ‘Dad, it hurts so much. It would have been better if I had died.’ Sometimes he even talked about ending his own life.”
The family sought help from psychiatrists and clinical psychologists, while specialists at the Burn Institute began long-term counselling to help Kafi recover emotionally.
Even today, treatment continues.
Monthly follow-up appointments are accompanied by laser therapy, physiotherapy, massage and daily exercises. Without regular treatment, swelling returns to his hands and feet.
“When doctors bend his fingers during laser therapy, he screams in pain,” Miraj said. “I cannot watch. I leave the room. His mother stays beside him.”
Recovery has also brought a heavy financial burden.
Miraj estimates the family has already spent around Tk600,000 on medicines alone, despite receiving some support from the Burn Institute.
Many specialised medicines cost more than Tk3,000 for bottles that last only a few days.
During the early stages of recovery, doctors also prescribed a high-protein diet that significantly increased household expenses.
“I have another child to raise,” he said. “Whatever my son needs, I somehow arrange it.”
Apart from limited assistance from Prime Bank, he says the family has received little long-term institutional support.
Today Kafi has returned to Milestone School.
His parents considered transferring him elsewhere but decided against it.
They believe his teachers and classmates understand his condition in ways that a new school never could.
He attends classes mainly to rebuild confidence rather than academic performance.
One year after the Milestone tragedy, the aircraft is gone, the headlines have faded and investigations have been completed.
For Kafi, however, recovery is still measured not in months, but in hospital appointments, painful therapy sessions and the hope that one day life might finally feel normal again.