‘Should’ve held her tighter’
"Why did I not hold her hand tighter?"
Like any grandfather, Hazi Jamal Ahmed could not accept that he lost his young granddaughter and that too to a tragedy that could have been averted had it not been for the gross negligence of the city they live in.
"How could she have just fallen into a drain and died?" he wailed, unstoppable.
Sehrin Mahbub Sadia, only 19, was a first-year honours student of computer science at International Islamic University in the port city.
While returning home with her grandfather and uncle from a doctor's chamber on Monday night, she slipped into a drain in Agrabad Badamtali area.
Firefighters were able to recovered her body a few hours later, after removing a few tonnes of waste from the drain.
Sadia was the eldest of four siblings and her parents' hopes and dreams revolved around her.
Now, a pall of gloom hangs over their house in Halishahar Mainnapara area.
Her mother Sheli Akter was still looking for her.
"My Sadia, where have you gone?" she cried out. "She was the guardian of my other children. We shared many dreams ... of her getting higher education and bringing pride to our name and home … It's all shattered now."
Sadia's father Mohammad Ali stared blankly into space. When he did speak, he did so with immense pain.
"My daughter wanted to be a computer engineer. My Sadia, where are you?"
Sadia's younger sister Sinthia said she had requested her sister to take her along to the doctor's chamber. "Had I been there with her…," she stopped there as her voice began to choke.
Meanwhile, Sadia's classmates held a protest in area where the incident took place, demanding punishment to those responsible for her death.
Chattogram City Corporation has cordoned off the spot with a fence after Sadia's death.
Santosh Mallick, a local, could not hold back his anger: "Why did not they not put up a fence before such accidents occurred?... Most of drains and canals in the city have become death traps as they have been left open for year after year."
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