‘Why did they kill Bangabandhu?’

“Why did they kill Bangabandhu? I’m feeling very bad [about it],” a six-year old Suha asked his father while visiting the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum in the city on Monday.

The house at Dhanmondi Road 32, where the country’s founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family members were killed by a handful of renegade army officers on Aug 15, 1975, is now known as Bangabandhu Memorial Museum.

Mujib, who led the country’s independence struggle, has been nick-named Bangabandhu, or friend of Bengal.

His body was found lying in a pool of blood on the stairs of the second floor of the house on the fateful night.

There were signs of shots almost everywhere on the wall of the second floor. The body of his wife, Begum Fazilatunnesa, sons Sheikh Kamal, Sheikh Jamal and Sheikh Russel, daughters-in-law Sultana Kamal Khuki and Parveen Jamal Rosy were found in his bedroom.

Mujib’s daughters, incumbent prime minister Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana, were in Belgium, and thus escaped the massacre.

There are signs of blood in the room where Hasina used to live. A photograph hung outside the room shows that Bangabandhu is looking at some pigeons.

The house was the centre point of the 1969 mass-uprising, 1970 general elections and non-cooperation movement of March 1971.

Curator of the memorial museum Syed Siddiqur Rahman said over 1,000 people visit the historical house every day.

Physician Mahbubur Rahman, who came from Jessore district to pay respect to Mujib, said: “Until I come here, I did not know what a simple life he (Mujib) led despite being such a great man.”

“How such a man of great mind and his family were so brutally killed?” he asked.

The people coming to pay their respect to the great leader demanded that his fugitive killers be brought back home through diplomatic efforts or otherwise and be hanged.
A government official, Shafiqur Rahman, who came to the museum along with his family said: “The nation won’t be free from disgrace if the killers are not hanged. And those who are opposing it should be punished too.”

“We should remember that those who are involved in the killing are not actually human beings…,” he contended.

Awami League general secretary and local government minister Syed Ashraful Islam has already said that the government has taken initiatives to bring the killers back.

Author : Mamunur Rashid /  Source : bdnews24

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