Meherun Nesa Tanha. File Photo

By Borun Kumar Das

DHAKA, May 23, 2025 (BSS) – On the evening of August 5, 2024, Meherun Nesa Tanha returned home in high spirits. A 22-year-old student of Hazrat Shah Ali Women’s College in the city’s Mirpur area, Tanha had just participated in a jubilant rally celebrating the fall of the nearly 16 year-long fascist regime in face of the massive student-people uprising.
 
The country was rejoicing; hope floated in the air. But who knew, the joy, in her home, would be short-lived -- brutally replaced by silence.
 
Tanha’s grief-stricken mother, Asma Akter, a 45-year-old housewife, burst into tears while recalling the fatal incident at an interview with BSS at their rented house in the city’s Mirpur-13 area. The family hailed from Azimnagar village in Harirampur Upazila of Manikganj district.
 
She said Tanha returned home from the victory procession around 7.15pm when firing was continuing in the Natun Bazar area adjacent to their house.
 
“After entering the house, she asked me to give her water. I handed her a glass of water. She drank it and went to her room to tie her hair. Soon after combing her hair, when she was standing in front of her reading table switching off the light, a bullet flew in through the window and hit her chest,” Asma wailed.
 
When they took her to a local hospital, doctors declared her dead.
 
Tanha balanced her study as a third-year honors student by doing a part-time job at a local showroom to help her family. Her father, Mosharraf Hossain, a 64 year-old car driver, earned only Taka 16,000 a month—far from enough to cover the needs of a family. Yet, the family was passing days in a happy mode with mutual love and sacrifice.
 
Tanha’s grieving father, Mosharraf, said they were not involved in any politics. His daughter wasn’t involved either.
 
However, Tanha’s heart broke on July 19, when her maternal cousin Akram Khan Rabbi was shot dead as he joined a procession under the banner anti-discrimination student movement in the city’s Mazar Road area in Mirpur.
 
“Rabbi had just appeared for his MBA exams. He had a prayer mat in his hand as he joined the procession after offering the Jummah prayers. He didn’t commit any crime. Yet, police first shot him in the hand and then again in the stomach after he fell,” Mosharraf said in an emotion- choked voice.
 
Rabbi’s body was kept forcibly in the hospital morgue for three days, he said, adding, when the authorities handed over the body, it was decomposed and not even suitable for a burial bath (proper Islamic wash).
 
The grief of losing Rabbi couldn’t paralyze Tanha—it galvanized her to join the movement against the injustice.
 
Mosharraf said since then, Tanha regularly joined the street protest with placards reading, “I will not let my brother’s blood go in vain.”

Her parents, worried, pleaded with her to stop. But she couldn't. “My brother was a martyr,” she said. “I can’t stay home. We must finish what he started.” Tanha’s only brother, 19-year-old Abdur Rahman Tarif, who passed HSC, used to accompany her during the movement.

August 5 started like any other chaotic day amid the uprising as thousands of people entered the city through different entrances breaking the curfew aimed at terminating the “fascist regime” that lasted for over one and a half decade.

Finally, “the autocratic leader Sheikh Hasina stepped down as the Prime Minister and fled the country” by noon in face of the historic massive uprising. When the news had spread, the air across the city as well as the country pulsed with victory chants.

Tanha and her younger brother, Tarif, left home to join in the celebration along with hundreds of thousands of people cheering on the city streets.

According to her father, Tanha and her brother paraded different city streets with the victory procession and finally they celebrated their final moment of victory at the Ganabhaban, the official residence of the ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Her mother, Asma, tearfully recalled that when Tanha returned home that evening, she gave her mother a flower. “Maa, this is from Ganabhaban. It’s for you,” Tanha told her mother before asking to give her a glass of water for the last time.

“When I asked her about Tarif, she said she didn’t know. Then I told her to call him and tell him to return home via the backside road, as there was unrest nearby.

“Just as she finished the call around 7.45pm, she fell onto the ground as a bullet flew in through the window and hit her chest. I saw blood pouring out from her chest and mouth,” Asma wailed.

“Immediately I called her father, when he rushed in, we picked her up and took her to the hospital. But the doctors could not save her,” she sobbed.

Pointing to the flowers Tanha had brought for her from the Ganabhaban, she said in a voice weighed down with grief, “My daughter will never return. I have kept the flowers carefully. But the flowers are withering.”

However, Tanha was laid to eternal rest the same night around 11.30pm in the Purba Baishtek graveyard at Mirpur in the city.

Asma said her daughter loved spicy food. She especially loved Bombay chili.

“Every Friday, my daughter would cook pulao and beef. Now when I try to cook the same, memories overwhelm me,” Tanha’s grieving mother said.

Tanha and her brother had a good intimacy, she said, adding, since Tanha’s death, her brother, Tarif, couldn’t sleep at night and he even cannot take food as her memories haunt him.

“I dreamt my daughter would finish her studies, get a job, and marry into a good family. But now, that dream has been ruined.

“Sometimes, during mealtimes, I mistakenly call out, ‘Tanha, come to eat’. Then I realize—how will she come now? My whole world collapsed in a blink. No one now says, ‘Mom, I got the salary—do you need anything?’” Asma cried.

Tanha’s family still cannot accept her death. Her parents demanded punishment for the perpetrators through proper investigation. Her father, Mosharraf filed a case in the International Crimes Tribunal accusing ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and 40 others over Tanha’s killing.

“My innocent daughter was killed. My heart is empty. I want justice,” weeping Asma demanded.

Tanha’s maternal uncle and martyred Rabbi’s father, Faruk Khan, said, “She was our only niece. We all loved her dearly. After my son—her cousin Rabbi—was martyred on July 19, Tanha stayed at our house to take care of her aunt”.

She returned home on August 5 following the downfall of the autocratic regime, he said in a sobbing tone, adding, “If only I hadn’t let her go, we would have not lost her too after my son.”