Birshreshtha Hamidur Rahman Memorial: Dilapidated building finally being reconstructed

Nearly four years after The Daily Star ran a report on the Birshreshtha Hamidur Rahman memorial building that fell into disrepair, at his village home in Khordakhalishpur village of Jhenidah's Moheshpur upazila, the government has finally started to rebuild it.

The report, headlined 'War hero memorial on verge of collapse', was published in the paper on January 19, 2017.    

The building would be a four storey one, with Tk 2.73 crore allocated for the cost of its construction.

The work of construction started on October 26, 2020. The deadline to finish the second storey of the building is March 31 this year.

Tender for the work was floated on May 13 of last year and construction firm Galaxy Associate, based in Kushtia, was later awarded the work order -- under the supervision of Public Works Department in Jhenidah -- for constructing the building on four decimals of land.

Kabir Hossain, a site engineer, said according to the architectural plan, there will be three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a drawing room, a dining room and a kitchen on each floor of the building.

However, the decision to reconstruct the memorial building did not come so easy.

In the first week of February in 2017, the High Court (HC) bench of Justice Kazi Rezaul Haque and Justice Mohammad Ullah issued a rule on the authorities concerned, asking as to why steps would not be taken to restore the dilapidated Birshreshtha Hamidur Rahman memorial building.

The HC bench issued the rule after hearing a writ petition filed in this regard by Emtiaj Ahmed, president of social organisation 'Samajer Proti Jubo Udyog', who came to learn about the state of the building from the report published in The Daily Star on January 19, 2017.  

Birshreshtha Hamidur Rahman was born in 1954. He joined the Liberation War while serving in the then East Bengal Regiment. On October 28, 1971, as he fought Pakistani occupation forces on the Dhali frontier in Sreemangal of Sylhet, Hamidur sacrificed his life for the country.

To commemorate his sacrifice, the memorial building was established on three decimals of land in his native village in 1981. Since then however, the building has not been maintained.

"There was also a plan to rename Khordakhalishpur village as Hamidnagar in his honour," said Hamidur Rahman's younger brother Fazlur Rahman. "Back in 2007, a declaration on the renaming was made by Bir Uttam C.R. Dutta, a Liberation War sector commander. But sadly, nothing has happened since."