by Borun Kumar Dash

DHAKA, June 16, 2025 (BSS) – It was lunch time on August 5, 2024. Md Tahmid Abdullah, a Computer Science and Engineering student at Bangladesh University of Business and Technology (BUBT), sat on the dining table for lunch and subsequently he started eating rice with red spinach.

 In the meantime, he received a call from his friend, confirming autocratic Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had fled the country in the face of the massive student-people uprising.

 Immediately, Tahmid left his half-eaten lunch and rushed to join the victory procession.

 “I have to join the victory procession. Keep the rest of my rice, I will eat after returning from the procession,” he told his mother while stepping out of the house for the celebration.

 That plate of rice, with mashed potatoes, red spinach, and spiced lentils, had remained untouched, but Tahmid never returned to complete the meal.

 When his mother, Tanjil, tried to stop him from going outside, Tahmid assured his mother: “I will return soon.”

 But the tragedy was, an hour later, his mother received news that he had been shot. His fellow protesters carried him from hospital to hospital in search of treatment, wasting crucial time.

 “If my son had received timely medical treatment, he could have survived. He died of excessive bleeding,” Tahmid’s grief-stricken mother said tearfully.

 Tahmid’s grieving mother, Tanjil, burst into tears while recalling the memories of her son in an interview with BSS at their residence at Senpara in the city’s Mirpur area. His father, Abul Hossain — a scorer for the Bangladesh Cricket Board — died of a cardiac arrest in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

 On that fateful day, she said, Tahmid was shot in the chest when police and Awami League activists attacked on the victory procession in Mirpur-2 after the downfall of Sheikh Hasina-led fascist government.

 However, he breathed his last on August 10 while undergoing treatment at Dhaka Medical College Hospital’s ICU. Tahmid was laid to eternal rest at the Mirpur Martyred Intellectuals’ Graveyard.

 According to eyewitnesses, when firing erupted in the Mirpur-2 area, Tahmid sat beside a utility pole. But when he stood up, thinking the danger had passed, he was struck by two bullets.

Referring to doctors, his mother said Tahmid’s lungs were punctured in three places. Of the two bullets that hit him, one passed through his lung while the other lodged inside.

 Tanjil recalled that during the anti-discrimination student movement, he often urged his mother to join the protests. When his mother refused to join the protest, he would scold her.

 “You never protest against injustice. You don’t even let me,” Tanjil recalled as her son once told her.

 The day before his fatal injury, Tahmid had already been hurt by shotgun pellets in his leg during the protest on August 4. But his mother discovered the matter the next morning when he was writhing in pain after waking up from sleep.  

 Later, Tanjil came to know that the pellets were removed at a nearby clinic.

 While visiting their modest single-story home in Senpara in Mirpur, this correspondent observed Tahmid’s mother now lives with her two daughters Fatema Tasnim (15) and Khadija Nusrat (9), both madrasa students. The family survives on rent from five rooms in the compound.

 Tahmid, the eldest among his three siblings, had only completed his third semester at BUBT. He was his mother’s only hope.

 “My son wanted to carry our family forward. He used to say, ‘I’ll take care of you and my sisters when I graduate.’ After his father died, he took on that responsibility,” Tanjil recounted with heavy grief.

Hajera Chowdhury, a neighbor, remembered Tahmid fondly. “He was always smiling. Just like his father — he’d grin before answering any question,” she recalled.