Shaheed Dr Sadat Ali was my father. He was a teacher of Dhaka University. My father was an extremely peace-loving and highly-educated person. Although the memories I have of him are vague, even those are quite rare. Today, 24 years after independence, I’ve sat down to write about those memories. They are from a time when I was a child aged between 5 and 6.
The history of Bangladesh’s liberation, achieved through the supreme sacrifices made by lakhs of patriotic people and revolutionary leaders in the armed war of 1971, is the history of the greatest achievement of our national life. I am writing this article to reminisce about the struggle and sacrifice of one of the valiant freedom fighters of this soil – those who have written their names in the pages of our history with their blood. She is Shaheed Lutfun Nahar Helen.
Tojammel Hossen was almost 10 years my junior. He had a widowed mother and two brothers. He was the oldest of them—and the apple of his mother’s eye.
students on the second floor of the Science Annex Building, but the commotion caused by some students in the verandah served as a
My father was picked up on August 12, 1971 by members of Pakistan defence forces from our home in Sreenath Chatterjee lane in Barishal city. The next day, our family friend Ahmed went (at great personal risk) and retrieved my father’s shoes and spectacles from the banks of the Kirtankhola River and gave them to my mother. It is our assumption that he was shot and killed there on the night he was apprehended.
Dr Mahi, my former colleague, was an exemplary student, teacher, friend and, above all, a human being. On December 14, members of Al Badr militia force, which collaborated with the Pakistani military in its genocidal campaign, picked up Mahi from his house at Fuller Road, only to be shot dead blindfolded, along with many others.
Today is a black day in our history. The brutal killing of some of the brightest members of the intelligentsia by the occupation army of Pakistan and local collaborators stand out as one of the most horrendous acts of atrocity committed anywhere in the world.
