Martyred Hafez Antor -Photo: Collected

DINAJPUR, June 2, 2025 (BSS) – The father of 16-year-old Hafez Masum Reza Antor, who embraced martyrdom during the 2024 July Uprising, still waits by the roadside carrying his photos as if Antor might return to him anytime.

"My innocent son, Hafez Md Masum Reza Antor, embraced martyrdom for the country while participating in the student-public uprising against discrimination. I know, I’ll never hear him call me ‘Baba’ again.

“But I still wait on the roadside with my son's photos, as if he might return and call out, ‘Baba’,” grief-stricken father of Antor, Mizanur Rahman, uttered these heart-wrenching words.

While talking to BSS, Mizanur, a resident of Karla village of Biral upazila in the district, recounted his lifelong memories starting from Antor’s birth until his martyrdom.  

Mizanur had moved to Dhaka’s Konapara area in 2005 and worked in different factories as an electrician. It was there he met Antor’s maternal grandfather’s family and married Antor’s mother, Nahida Begum, in 2007. The couple was passing days happily and they were blessed with the baby boy, Antor, two years later in January, 2009.

However, as the child turned four, the couple’s marriage began to fall apart. They eventually separated, and Mizanur, fearing for his son’s well-being, took full custody and returned to his ancestral village here.

He raised Antor with love and care. Later, he married Sultana Begum of Dharmapur village in the same upazila, with whom he has two daughters—Minu Akter (9) and Mahima Akter (4).

Mizanur, however, enrolled Antor in the Al-Noor Qawmi Madrasa in Hazaribagh, Dhaka aimed at making him an Islamic scholar. Over eight years, the boy memorized the Holy Quran and became a full-fledged Hafez. Prior to his demise, Antor had begun advanced Islamic studies, aspiring to become an alem (Islamic scholar).

But on August 6, just a day after the fascist regime fell in face of the massive student-people uprising, Mizanur came to know through facebook that many students of Al-Noor Madrasah, including Antor, joined the anti-discrimination student movement in Shahbagh on August 4 while many of them were killed.

Immediately, Mizanur rushed from Dinajpur to Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) around 3.30pm on the same day and started checking out the list of injured people. But failing to find his son even after a frantic and heartbreaking search, he started looking for Antor in the hospital morgue.

Finally, Mizanur and Antor’s maternal grandfather Mohammad Ali and uncle Moslem Uddin identified Antor’s body in the morgue in a decomposed state. A hospital staff informed him that Antor had died on the spot on August 4 during the demonstration and his body was kept in the morgue as an unclaimed one following an autopsy.

Later, they received the body and took it to Antor’s maternal grandfather’s home at Konapara in Dhaka's Jatrabari area for burial.

Antor was laid to eternal rest at Dogair graveyard in the Konapara area after Maghrib prayers on the same day.

“My son was a Hafez of the Holy Quran. He studied and worked for Islam until his last breath. I believe the almighty Allah will accept him as a martyr,” Mizanur tearfully said.

Demanding justice for killing his son, he said, “Those who killed my innocent son must be brought to justice. Only then my son’s soul will find peace.”