Ten-year-old Tanvir was sitting in front of his computer, looking at his father’s photo set as desktop background. “I try to find him in his photograph,” said the boy, a class-four student of Manipur High School’s Rupnagar branch. He got the computer as a gift from his father a few days before the last Eid-ul-Fitr.
Tanvir’s father Hazrat Ali was a good Samaritan killed trying to save three elderly women from armed muggers in the capital on April 6.
Hazrat, a sales supervisor of Kallol Group, was on his way back home when he saw a gang of four pounce on the women at Ranikhola in Mirpur-2. As he went to the rescue of the three women, the muggers opened fire on him.
A bullet pierced Hazrat’s chest, leaving him dead on the spot.
A month into the incident, his wife Salma Sultana is passing a tough time with son Tanvir Hassan Prince and daughter Sinthia Anjum Pretty.
These correspondents found Tanvir gazing at his father’s photo on the PC as they went to Mirpur-2 house of the family on May 5 afternoon. Five-year-old Sinthia, who was sticking with her mother most of the time, had joined his brother for once.
“Sinthia always asks me and her brother if there is any way to bring back her father,” Salma said. “I got no answer, but Tanvir straightaway says their father would never return.”
“Usually Sinthia doesn’t talk about her father by day,” she said, adding, “But she gets upset after the evening and starts asking such questions.”
Apart from the immediate worries over how to pay for the family expenses, future of her children is a big concern for the 32-year-old widow.
“I wish my children got higher education,” she said, “But don’t know how it would be possible.”
Salma said she has to pay a monthly rent of Tk 6,500 for their two-room flat. She needs around Tk 20,000 to cover the family’s monthly expenses including the house rent and school fees of the children.
Several organisations, including a private bank, have donated the family some Tk 3,00,000 and Hazrat’s employer Kallol Group has promised to provide Tk 12,500 every month.
Salma said the group had given them the first month’s Tk 12,500, but she was not sure how many days they would continue.
“We have no relatives in Dhaka… We will have to leave the city if we do not get help from any organisation or the government.”
“What a happy family was ours! Now everything is over,” Salma said, choking back tears. “He [Hazrat] did not think about me, not even about our children. He sacrificed his life for others and left the family in trouble.”
“Won’t he get recognition for his sacrifice?”
Salma, who passed HSC, urged the government to arrange a job for her.
She also expressed dissatisfaction over the police investigation into the killing.
The widow filed a murder case with Mirpur Police Station on the day of the incident, accusing four unidentified muggers.
Kazi Wazed Ali, officer in charge of the police station, told The Daily Star two special police teams were working on the matter.
Law enforcers arrested Hemayet Hossain Himu and his brother Ujjwal, both members of a mugging gang of the neighbourhood, in this connection, said Golam Nabi Sheikh,
investigation officer of the case.
-With The Daily Star input
