A perpetrator and a victim of bombing died at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital yesterday when a 19-year-old victim and a Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal (JCD) bomb-maker succumbed to their injuries yesterday.
A student of Dhaka’s Kabi Nazrul Government College, Sanjid Hossain Ovi, was critically injured when a splinter bomb hurled at him exploded in his face on January 14.
He succumbed to his injuries around 1am yesterday after fighting for his life for seven days.
Ovi was out with two friends when a crude bomb was detonated in Dhaka’s Gulistan area. Witnesses said a part of Ovi’s face had been “blown off” in the explosion.
The hard-working college student was known to work part-time to support his studies and his family.
Well-known bomb maker and JCD general secretary of Dhaka’s New Market unit, Mahbubur Rahman Bappi, 28, had his right hand blown off from the wrist when the bomb he was making exploded in Dhaka’s Lalbagh area.
He died around 5am yesterday, DMCH police outpost in-Charge Mozammel Haque said.
Two minors who were in the room when Bappi’s bomb went off – Happy Akhter, 13, a student of Azimpur Girls School, and six-year-old Ripon – were also hit by shrapnel in the explosion.
Death toll hits 30
Yesterday was the 17th day of the BNP-led alliance’s nationwide non-stop road, rail and waterway blockade, which, punctuated by bombings and arson, has left at least 30 people dead.
More than 800 have been injured in the violence.
Some 274 vehicles have been torched and another 370 vandalised across the country.
In the afternoon yesterday, while Ovi’s autopsy was being conducted at Dhaka Medical College, his mother Nurjahan Begum was found sitting on a small staircase near the morgue.
She returned a blank look when bystanders asked about her son.
She did not want her child to be placed under the knives, she said.
But hospital staff argued that the autopsy had to be done for the sake of investigation.
After the autopsy, Ovi’s classmates took his body to Kabi Nazrul Government College, where he was a first-year student. He worked part-time at a computer repair shop.
Relatives then made their way towards his village home in Bikrampur for the burial.
“My child did no wrong. I do not know why they did not let him live,” Nurjahan said while waiting for the autopsy to be concluded.
Nurjahan has attended to her son since he was admitted to hospital.
Doctors, visitors and passers-by repeatedly tried to reassure her but, seeing the extent of his injuries, she feared that Ovi might not recover.
Mother and son spoke to each other normally for the last time on Tuesday. Then his condition rapidly deteriorated early on Wednesday.
“Ovi was writhing in pain and tried to hold me with unsteady hands. He told me not to leave him alone. If he had recovered, we would have gone back to our village home. This city is not ours,” she said.
Ovi sustained injuries to his left eye and head. He was shifted from the DMCH to the Eye Hospital in the capital’s Agargaon area. Doctors shifted him back to the DMCH.
His father, Delwar Hossain, is a vegetable trader in Kunja Babu Lane in Old Dhaka.
His elder sister died three months ago from pregnancy complications.
Now just Ovi’s one and a half year-old brother remains with his parents.
“My son had no demands. If I gave me Tk10 in the morning, he would be happy. He walked to save money. He was not involved in politics. Look how many of his classmates have come,” Ovi’s mother told the Dhaka Tribune.
<B>Case filed against Bappi<B>
Lalbagh police Officer-in-Charge Moniruzzaman said Sub-Inspector (SI) Robin Ahmed filed a case against Bappi under the Special Powers Act and Explosives Act on Wednesday night.
Charges have also been brought against Bappi’s sister, Jhumur, his brother-in-law, Abdul Hakim, and four or five unidentified people.
Nine people, including Jhumur, have been detained, said the police officer.
“But Hakim is in hiding,” he said.
Bappi was making bombs at his brother-in-law’s house on Wednesday when one went off and left him and two others injured.
Mofiz Uddin Ahmed, deputy commissioner of Lalbagh division of police, said: “Bappi is a well-known bomb maker in the capital’s Nilkhet and Kataban area. He is better known as Boma Bappi.”
