Murder of two innocuous students
Friday, 5 February 2010
Maswood Alam Khan
One of the sweet experiences during my last visit to the USA in 2008 was for an hour or two I spent on an open field by the side of a road which skimmed along the bank of a big lake somewhere in Maryland while I was on a day-long visit to a home of one of my relations.
As I was enjoying the lake-view sitting on the grassy field I witnessed a marvellous sight of flocks of wild ducks fearlessly walking across the road--their chicks trailing them quite leisurely, the motorists driving on the road very slowly. Lest a motorist should drive recklessly while passing the section of the road, earmarked as "High Duck Crossing Area", a duck-crossing warning signpost is erected on the roadside with a camera installed to monitor whether motorists abide by the speed limit to safeguard the ducks.
Feeding those wild ducks, my relation told me, is a punishable offense. Neighbours are warned not to feed these ducks because such doting upon the birds serves to draw them to people-infested areas and poses a greater risk of them being hit in traffic.
As I was reading Thursday morning the death news of Hamim, a five-year old kindergartener, being run over by a speeding minibus as he was crossing the road with his mother in front of his Willes Little Flower School at Kakrail last Wednesday, I was imagining how we care about human life and how the civilised people in the West care about birds' life.
In any civilised society a driver of a motorised vehicle has to appear in a tough written test, undergo rigorous practical tests, both off-road and on-road, and must get his or her physical as well as psychological health checked before he or she is handed a driving license.
Moreover, governments of civilised countries make sure that every single driver is aware of how to drive in critical areas. Wherever there is a school not only there is a warning signpost on the roadside, a motorist while passing by a school, and even beyond the school, reflexively becomes extra cautious as a part of culture infused into the society for a long time. Drivers in western countries habitually slow down their vehicles near a park, a field or even near an ice-cream parlour, wherever there is a chance for children to throng.
How can we expect in our country such a humane behaviour from the driver of a minibus who perhaps never attended even a primary school? How can we expect a minibus driver to maintain his composure when he is under a mental pressure to make a daily target of a number of trips up and down fighting the horrible traffic jams of Dhaka city? Why should we expect that a driver of a commercial vehicle will not ride roughshod over others when he is underpaid? How can we expect that there would not be a repeat of such an accident when a killer driver never gets punished by a court of law?
We all must have observed that compared to minibus drivers the drivers of big buses that ply the routes between district headquarters are cautious and they make lesser accidents.
The reason is quite understandable. The driver of such a big bus, usually a matured driver with genuine driving license, is well-educated and well-paid while the driver of a minibus, who was perhaps a helper a few months back and now holds a fake driving licence, is neither educated nor well-paid. A driver of an inter-district bus is required to drive an air-conditioned and well-equipped bus only for one single trip a day while the driver of a minibus has to make a number of trips everyday and is required to drive a rickety minibus not equipped with even a basic feature like a comfortable driving chair or an easily operable shift gear and is compelled to negotiate the road depending on shouts made by a helper on the gate because the owner of the minibus is ready to grease the palms of an inspector but is reluctant to spend money on account of installing a set of rear-view mirrors or a set of indicator lights.
Hamim for the last few days had been nagging and begging his father to take him to the trade fair at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar but his father Motaleb Sheikh couldn't make the time due to his heavy engagements in business. Lastly, Motaleb however promised his only son Hamim that he would take him to the trade fair on Friday next. That next Friday didn't come to Hamim's innocuous life.
Another innocuous life of a student was extinguished on the same day. He was Mohammad Abu Bakar Siddique, a third-year student of Islamic History and Culture and a resident of Sir AF Rahman Hall of Dhaka University. Bakar was the son of Mohammad Rustam Ali, a small farmer of Golabari village at Madhupur upazila in Tangail. He never asked his poor father for money to defray his expenses in Dhaka. Rather he used to send some money to his father out of his meagre earnings he used to make from private tuitions. He stood second in his class and scored First Class marks in the two years of his study in the university. He never indulged in politics; he was completely apolitical. His only dream was to lift his poor parents from the clutches of poverty.
Abu Bakar Siddique died last Wednesday at Dhaka Medical College Hospital after he had been injured in a factional clash that turned into a gunfight on Tuesday between the two factions of BCL's Sir F Rahman Hall unit over establishing dominance in the hall. At least 30 resident students of the hall were injured. Bakar was reportedly wounded by a teargas shell fired by police to stop the gunfight.
How to describe the tragic deaths and will the government take preventive measures to thwart such mishaps in the future?
(The writer can be reached at e-mail: maswood@hotmail.com)
One of the sweet experiences during my last visit to the USA in 2008 was for an hour or two I spent on an open field by the side of a road which skimmed along the bank of a big lake somewhere in Maryland while I was on a day-long visit to a home of one of my relations.
As I was enjoying the lake-view sitting on the grassy field I witnessed a marvellous sight of flocks of wild ducks fearlessly walking across the road--their chicks trailing them quite leisurely, the motorists driving on the road very slowly. Lest a motorist should drive recklessly while passing the section of the road, earmarked as "High Duck Crossing Area", a duck-crossing warning signpost is erected on the roadside with a camera installed to monitor whether motorists abide by the speed limit to safeguard the ducks.
Feeding those wild ducks, my relation told me, is a punishable offense. Neighbours are warned not to feed these ducks because such doting upon the birds serves to draw them to people-infested areas and poses a greater risk of them being hit in traffic.
As I was reading Thursday morning the death news of Hamim, a five-year old kindergartener, being run over by a speeding minibus as he was crossing the road with his mother in front of his Willes Little Flower School at Kakrail last Wednesday, I was imagining how we care about human life and how the civilised people in the West care about birds' life.
In any civilised society a driver of a motorised vehicle has to appear in a tough written test, undergo rigorous practical tests, both off-road and on-road, and must get his or her physical as well as psychological health checked before he or she is handed a driving license.
Moreover, governments of civilised countries make sure that every single driver is aware of how to drive in critical areas. Wherever there is a school not only there is a warning signpost on the roadside, a motorist while passing by a school, and even beyond the school, reflexively becomes extra cautious as a part of culture infused into the society for a long time. Drivers in western countries habitually slow down their vehicles near a park, a field or even near an ice-cream parlour, wherever there is a chance for children to throng.
How can we expect in our country such a humane behaviour from the driver of a minibus who perhaps never attended even a primary school? How can we expect a minibus driver to maintain his composure when he is under a mental pressure to make a daily target of a number of trips up and down fighting the horrible traffic jams of Dhaka city? Why should we expect that a driver of a commercial vehicle will not ride roughshod over others when he is underpaid? How can we expect that there would not be a repeat of such an accident when a killer driver never gets punished by a court of law?
We all must have observed that compared to minibus drivers the drivers of big buses that ply the routes between district headquarters are cautious and they make lesser accidents.
The reason is quite understandable. The driver of such a big bus, usually a matured driver with genuine driving license, is well-educated and well-paid while the driver of a minibus, who was perhaps a helper a few months back and now holds a fake driving licence, is neither educated nor well-paid. A driver of an inter-district bus is required to drive an air-conditioned and well-equipped bus only for one single trip a day while the driver of a minibus has to make a number of trips everyday and is required to drive a rickety minibus not equipped with even a basic feature like a comfortable driving chair or an easily operable shift gear and is compelled to negotiate the road depending on shouts made by a helper on the gate because the owner of the minibus is ready to grease the palms of an inspector but is reluctant to spend money on account of installing a set of rear-view mirrors or a set of indicator lights.
Hamim for the last few days had been nagging and begging his father to take him to the trade fair at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar but his father Motaleb Sheikh couldn't make the time due to his heavy engagements in business. Lastly, Motaleb however promised his only son Hamim that he would take him to the trade fair on Friday next. That next Friday didn't come to Hamim's innocuous life.
Another innocuous life of a student was extinguished on the same day. He was Mohammad Abu Bakar Siddique, a third-year student of Islamic History and Culture and a resident of Sir AF Rahman Hall of Dhaka University. Bakar was the son of Mohammad Rustam Ali, a small farmer of Golabari village at Madhupur upazila in Tangail. He never asked his poor father for money to defray his expenses in Dhaka. Rather he used to send some money to his father out of his meagre earnings he used to make from private tuitions. He stood second in his class and scored First Class marks in the two years of his study in the university. He never indulged in politics; he was completely apolitical. His only dream was to lift his poor parents from the clutches of poverty.
Abu Bakar Siddique died last Wednesday at Dhaka Medical College Hospital after he had been injured in a factional clash that turned into a gunfight on Tuesday between the two factions of BCL's Sir F Rahman Hall unit over establishing dominance in the hall. At least 30 resident students of the hall were injured. Bakar was reportedly wounded by a teargas shell fired by police to stop the gunfight.
How to describe the tragic deaths and will the government take preventive measures to thwart such mishaps in the future?
(The writer can be reached at e-mail: maswood@hotmail.com)