Lensman risked life to save Bonya

Photographer Jibon Ahmed recoiled in horror when Rafida Ahmed Bonya, who could barely stand on her feet due to excessive bleeding, stared at him as he stepped forward to help her.

"Seeing her eyes radiating distrust and fear," recalled Jibon, "I thought as if I were a murderer."

With a thumb cut off, hands slashed, and head crisscrossed with machete cuts, Bonya stood dazed as only moments ago some criminals, believed to be religious extremists, had attacked her and her secular writer husband Avijit Roy at Dhaka University's TSC around 8:45pm on February 26.

“What's just happened here?” Bonya kept asking Jibon between breaths.

Jibon, his head bent, was in a dilemma of getting involved in the matter or leaving the scene after taking a few snaps. Three to four of his colleagues, all of them happened to be near the scene, had already left as soon as their professional duty was done.

The news Bonya was inquiring about then flashed in the air: “He has been hacked”.

A few yards away, Avijit Roy was lying on the sidewalk: face down, in a pool of blood.

"It was about this time Avijit's body began to shake violently,” recalled Jibon.

Bonya rushed to her husband. Taking his head on her lap, she cried, “Avijit, let's go.”

Jibon instantly clicked his camera thrice and rushed, elbowing his way through a more-than-150-strong crowd of onlookers including at least four policemen, to get a transport for taking the couple to a hospital.

All but Jibon had either abandoned or did nothing for the dying couple, perhaps because they didn't want to shoulder any legal harassment or risk their lives by stepping against the attackers.

Shariful Islam, reporter of a Bangla daily, with whose help outspoken writer Humayun Azad survived a similar attack in February 2004, had to appear before a court in connection with the case even last year.

Probably that was why one of Jibon's colleagues called him a “fool” around 10:00pm that night. His decision to help them even sparked a debate on journalists' “ethics” for being personally involved in such a matter.

Nonetheless, Jibon managed to take Avijit and Bonya to Dhaka Medical College Hospital eventually. He stuck to his decision even when Bonya started calling Jibon an attacker and kidnapper on the way to hospital.

“She banged on the grille between the CNG driver and the passengers' seat, and pleaded, 'Please let me go. Don't kill me. Have I ever harmed you?'” Jibon said.

“She would not believe me even after I showed her a cop following the CNG in a motorcycle or the hospital's signboard from distance.”

Though humiliated at the DMCH emergency where journalists are not allowed to enter, not even in that condition he had arrived, Jibon is happy that Bonya is alive.

News agency Banglar Chokh appointed Jibon, an HSC graduate, only six months ago. Before that, the youth who hailed from Khulna had spent two years in the Film Development Corporation as a still photographer.

And he responded to the call of the moment very well.

“I told them [journalists] that I decidedly ceased to consider myself as a journalist while helping the couple.

“I was a journalist while clicking the camera. And then I became an ordinary human being.”