Trouble for families of missing students

“My son is not dead, he’s just missing. He’s not dead,” Sabbir Hasan’s father Hasanur Rahman says hoping his son, who went swimming off Saint Martin’s Island, will come back alive.

Golam Mujtaba Dhrubabdnews24.com
Published : 19 April 2014, 07:52 AM
Updated : 20 April 2014, 04:04 PM

Four students of the Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology, Sabbir among them, went missing at sea on Apr 14.

Bodies of two have been recovered but Sabbir and his friend Ishtiaq Bin Mahmud Udoy remain untraced.

Coastguards say they are continuing search for the duo.

Udoy’s father Mahmud Ullah Gazi, a retired official of a private company, recalled their last conversation.

“Father, please pray for me. I’ll come back to Dhaka within four days of the Pahela Baishakh (the first day of Bengali new year). And please ask mother not to worry,” Udoy told his father before leaving.

Udoy and Sabbir were very good friends, he said.

Mahmud said he allowed his son to go on the tour after their examination. “Nine of them spent the night before their tour at my Basabo house,” he said.

Udoy told him that 11 of them would go to Cox’s Bazar from Kamalapur and 21 others would join them at Saint Martin’s.

“How could I know such a tragedy would follow?” he said with a blank gaze.

Udoy’s grief-stricken mother Afroza Begum, a teacher with a Kamalapur school, has not touched food for the past several days.

She is not talking to anyone.

Sabbir’s mother Selina Akter has fallen ill. “Her blood pressure is going up and down. She is not eating anything,” Sabbir’s father Hasanur said.

“She sobs looking at her son’s photo. At times she talks to it and stares at it for hours on end,” Hasanur said, adding he remains optimistic that his son would return.

“It will be incorrect to say my son is dead,” he said.

Udoy’s father is not that hopeful.

“We are still waiting. We came to our village home so that we can bury him once we get his body,” he said trying to control his tears.