School run turns tragic
Nine-year-old Humayara Yeasmin Ohi could hardly care about the wounds on her knees and elbows -- the wounds from an accident that turned her world upside down.
Instead, she grew restless, aching to see if her mother was okay.
Around 3:00pm yesterday, she was seen refusing medicine for her pain and holding her father, Rafiqul Islam, tight.
With tears streaming down, she kept asking, "Where is Ma? Call her. Where did you keep her? Take me to Ma. Which room is she in?"
Little did she know that her mother was never to return.
Ohi, a fourth grader, was on her way to Navy School with her mother Sabina Yeasmin, 31, and sister Rafia Yeasmin Mim, 6, on a battery-run auto-rickshaw.
She had an exam to sit for and Mim had tagged along with her and their mother as she had no one to look after her at home, locals said.
They were in front of Navy Market in Mirpur 14 around noon when a passenger bus of Trust Paribahan rammed the rickshaw from behind, making all three of its passengers fall to the ground.
The two little girls survived with wounds and scrapes, but their mother Sabina could not make it.
Talking to The Daily Star, the victim's uncle Zamilur Rahman, who runs a shop in the Navy Market, said locals pulled the rickshaw aside and rescued the three. They then took them to a nearby hospital, which referred Sabina to Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
Doctors declared her dead upon arrival at the DMCH emergency unit around 2:20pm, said Bachchu Mia, inspector of the hospital police outpost.
Zamilur added that she was alive at the previous hospital and lost consciousness on the way to DMCH. As there were no injury marks on her body, doctors suspect she died from haemorrhage. They said the cause of her death can only be confirmed after an autopsy.
Sabina's body is now at DMCH morgue for an autopsy today.
Her daughters and husband were still at the hospital till the filing of this report at 8:00pm yesterday.
"Let's go home with mother," Ohi kept insisting while her father Rafiqul, a retired Navy official, silently took care of hospital and legal formalities.
He could not break to his daughters that they lost their mother and refused to talk to reporters to protect his children's feelings for as long as he could.
Family members and witnesses said Rafiqul too had broken down upon reaching the hospital, but as time passed, he gained his strength and remained silent for his children.
Locals near the Navy Market claimed both the auto-rickshaw and the bus drivers were reckless.
Delowar Hossain, officer-in-charge of Bhasantek Police Station, told The Daily Star that they got the news of the accident at least three hours after it occurred.
"A police team then visited the spot and came to know that a Trust Paribahan bus hit the rickshaw. The driver, however, fled the area with the vehicle by then.
"We are now trying to identify the bus through CCTV footage, and a drive to arrest the driver is underway," he said, adding they have told the family to file a complaint in this regard.
Contacted, a top official of Trust Paribahan said he knows nothing about the accident.
Hailing from Sirajganj, the family used to live in a rented flat at the Bhasantek Rehabilitation Project housing. After retiring from the navy two years ago, Rafiqul started working at a private firm in Mymensingh and would visit his family in Dhaka once every month.
Sabina's uncle Zamilur said Rafiqul last spoke to his wife just as he started out for Dhaka on Monday night. He heard about the accident while he was on the road.
SCHOOLGIRL KILLED BY TRUCK
In a separate incident, a schoolgirl was crushed under the wheels of a truck on the Chapainawabganj-Sonamasjid Highway in Chapainawabganj's Shibganj upazila yesterday noon.
The victim, Munira Khatun, 10, a fifth grader of Pukuria Government Primary School, was on her way home from school with her friends for lunch break.
Quoting locals, Chowdhury Jubaer Ahmed, officer-in-charge of Shibganj Police Station, said the accident occurred around 1:30pm when a Chapainawabganj-bound truck from Sonamasjid ran over Munira and killed her on the spot.
Police were able to seize the vehicle but the driver and helper had both managed to flee.
Following the incident, people blockaded the highway and stopped traffic for an hour.
Comments