A murder leaves a family starving
Rekha just finished the Zohr prayers in her 10 to 8 feet tin-roof house in Patbari shanty along the rail tracks.
Too poor to get a prayer mat, she used her husband's lungi and a tattered gamchha to pray for the release of her husband from police custody.
“I cannot afford the cost to travel to Kotwali or Kaunia police stations where I could have looked for my husband,” the frail woman said.
Her husband, Monnaf, 35, was detained by police at Rangpur Medical College Hospital after the Japanese man, Hoshi Kunio, was shot dead on Saturday morning.
Kunio was travelling in Monnaf's rickshaw when two gunmen waylaid it and shot the foreign national near his grass field project at Alutary.
Rekha, the mother of a 16-year-old mentally challenged boy and a six-year-old daughter, was completely unaware of her husband's relationship with Kunio, who liked Monnaf, according to locals, for his sense of humour.
The family was starving since his detention, because they would have something to eat only when Monnaf got back home with 1kg of rice every night.
Rekha cannot think of how she can get the news of her husband.
“We don't have a mobile phone,” she said, trying to fight back her tears.
Yet Rekha's life was better than it was in the past.
An orphan, she spent her childhood working as a maid in a Gaibandha residence for food and shelter, but now she owns a house, no matter how small.
Lately, her mentally challenged son, Abdur Rahim, started working at a shop in the city's Ghora Pirer Majar for free because the owner fed him thrice a day.
On Saturday, the boy returned from the shop with the news that his father was “arrested" by police for "having connection with a murder".
Rahim's employer had shown him the news on television. “He asked me, 'is it true'?” said Rekha. “I told him to have patience and pray," she said, adding, "Who a poor orphan and her children can turn to?”
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