“What did my 9-year-old daughter do to deserve this kind of death?” Was the question Nurun Nahar asked, wiping tears from her eyes.
Nurun Nahar’s daughter Nadia, a student of class two, was run over by a bus trying to avoid attacks by hartal pickets on Tuesday in Gazipur.
“When we were running to flee the scene, Nadia’s shoe slipped off her foot, and as she squatted down to pick it up, a fleeing bus ran over her,” said Nurun Nahar trying to control her tears.
“I do not understand hartals and never fancied understanding it. I just want my daughter back,” she said.
“Her drawing books and papers are gathering dust at the corner of my house, but she is no more. How will I be living my life with these?” she asked while talking to the Dhaka Tribune Friday afternoon, in front of the Gazipur Sadar Hospital morgue.
Nurun Nahar, a resident of Rajpara village under Purbodhola upazila in Netrokona district was in Gazipur, visiting a relative’s house.
On Tuesday afternoon, she and her daughter, Nadia, were on their way back to Netrokona and were waiting for a bus at Chandna roundabout beside Dhaka-Mymensingh highway.
“All of a sudden, a group of unruly youths came out of nowhere and started vandalising vehicles indiscriminately, in and around the intersection. We were all running for a safe place. Nadia’s shoe must have slipped off her foot in the melee and I saw her squatting down to pick it,” Nurun Nahar said.
“Nadia was in a crouching position when a bus moved towards her. I raised my hands to stop it, but it did not and she died on the spot.”
Nurun Nahar, a night-guard at a yarn factory, dreamed of making her daughter a doctor one day.
“She was always among the top five in her class at Joina Bazar Abdar Government Primary School. But the killer bus and hartal have shattered my dream,” Nurun Nahar said.
“She was so alive – full of life. Now I am going home without her. If it was not for hartal, maybe she would still be breathing,” Nadia’s mother said.
Meanwhile, Officer-in-Charge of Joydevpur Sadar thana SM Kamruzzaman said police filed a case against 40 people over Nadia’s death on Tuesday night. So far, three Jamaat-Shibir activists have been arrested in the case. They are Shohel Rana, 25, Asaduzzaman, 23, and Mahmudul Hasan, 23.