College student, Kaniz Fatima Akhter Tasnim, a candidate for the next Higher Secondary Certificate exams, was returning home after taking test at Motijheel Ideal School and College on Friday afternoon. The 17-year old Tasnim, returning home with her aunt in a rickshaw, was happy that her exam was good. But who would know her life would be cut short abruptly by reckless driving?
Kaniz become yet another victim of reckless driving as a double-decker bus of Bangladesh Road Transport
Corporation knocked the rickshaw from back and ran over her at about 4:30pm in Motijheel Shapla Square area in the city.
‘We both fell down after the bus knocked the rickshaw. The bus ran over Kaniz leaving her in a pool of blood,’ said Rubina Akhter, aunt of the victim.
She was rushed to Dhaka Medical College Hospital where doctors declared her dead.
Two rickshaw-pullers, Nurul Alam, 58, and Fazlul Haque, 40, were injured in the accident and four rickshaws damaged.
Nurul Alam said he was waiting in the area for passengers. Suddenly, a double-decker knocked a running rickshaw and also damaged their vehicles.
Kaniz’s father Abdus Salek Hawlader was crying at DMCH, ‘Return my daughter. I do not want anything else.’
He said that the girl was at the centre of the family’s hope and happiness. ‘I have lost my most beloved one. How could I live without her?’
Kaniz was elder of the two daughters of Salek Hawlader from Gaurnadi in Barisal.
Motijheel police sub-inspector Abul Hossain said that they had seized the bus (Dhaka Metro-Ba-11-6255) and arrested the driver, Sahabuddin Fakir.
Reckless driving claims many lives and leave many others maimed in the country every year.
Roksana Begum Laila, 37, was crushed under the wheels of a bus at Rayerbagh of Jatrabari in the city in front of her six-year old daughter Nusrat Samia on September 24.
Sanjida Akter Shama, 30, wife of a RAB official, died on October 12 as a bus knocked her down at the BRTC bus depot in the city’s Kamalapur area.
-With New Age input
