PM’s grant relieves M’singh national hero
Khandakar Abdul Malek Shahidullah, an 85-year-old Language Movement veteran from Mymensingh, has been undergoing treatment at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU) since February 25.
His family members expressed unbounded gratitude to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for the support she extended for his treatment and admission at the BSMMU.
The national hero had been bedridden at his home in Nandibari area of Muktagachha town in Mymensingh, with nothing but the freedom fighter's monthly allowance to support his family and cover for his medical expenses due to multiple brain strokes that he suffered last year.
Along with other longstanding health conditions, including respiratory and heart diseases, Shahidullah has been suffering from speech impediment since the last stroke on December 13, 2019. His right arm and leg became paralysed after the first stroke in October that year.
The news on Shahidullah's plight was carried by different newspapers, while The Daily Star published a report on February 17 this year, headlined "Plight of a national hero".
Shahidullah's wife Suraiya Malek said the prime minister sanctioned Tk 12 lakh for her husband's treatment after taking notice of the matter and they received the grant on March 16.
"The grant came in when were in deep crisis, struggling to continue his treatment in Dhaka. The grant has given us high hopes for continuing the treatment."
We took him to the hospital at the initiative of former law minister Abdul Matin Khasru, also a presidium member of Awami League. Abdul Matin Khasru's wife Selina Khasru has been paying for the hospital bed and some other expenses."
Suraiya Malek also thanked The Daily Star for running the story on her husband on February 17.
In 1952, when the wave of protests during the Language Movement, demanding Bangla as a state language, shook the country, Shahidullah was only 17.
Ninth-grader Shahidullah and eight other students of Cooperative High School in Jamalpur's Dewanganj were expelled for taking part in a procession in Dewanganj town along with a number of other students that year.
Endorsed by his father, a medical officer of railway in the town, young Shahidullah stood defiant and rejected the offer of reinstatement of his student status at the school by seeking clemency to the school authorities.
The defiant Language Movement veteran went on to become a member of the provincial assembly in 1970 and later on, an organiser of the Liberation War in 1971. When the country's first president Shaheed Syed Nazrul Islam was president of Awami League's Greater Mymensingh unit, Shahidullah served as the organising secretary of the unit.