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Published : 09 May 2026, 01:19 PM
Under a heavy, suffocating silence that seemed to hang over Dhaka’s airport, a coffin arrived from the United States carrying not a returning scholar, but the broken remains of a dream called Nahida Sultana Bristy.
At 9:10am on Saturday, an Emirates flight from Dubai touched down at Shahjalal International Airport.
By 10:20am, her family stood face to face with the coffin that replaced years of hope, ambition and sacrifice.
Bristy had once left through these very gates with laughter, dreams, and her parents’ faith behind her -- bound for a PhD in the United States.
She was meant to return in triumph, a doctorate in hand, on Jul 17. Instead, she returned early, in silence, in a coffin.
As the casket was handed over, grief erupted.
Her mother Alvi Begum collapsed into tears, repeatedly calling out her daughter’s name, unable to accept the finality of what she was seeing.
Her father, relatives, her brother and grandfather stood frozen around her, some touching the coffin as if it might still answer back.
The airport became a place of suspended disbelief as Bristy’s body was prepared for its final journey to Madaripur in a specialised ambulance.
Her father Jahir Uddin Akon said, “I was not prepared for my daughter to return home as a body.”
He spoke of a daughter who studied relentlessly, prayed regularly, and carried a vision of returning home to serve the poor in rural Bangladesh.
“She wanted to be known as Dr Nahida Sultana Bristy,” he said, his voice breaking. “That title came -- but only after death.”
A house built in her name now stands unfinished in the village, a monument to a future that never arrived.
Foreign Secretary Asad Alam Siam said the government is working to ensure justice and remains in contact with US authorities.
Bristy will be laid to rest in Madaripur beside her grandparents after her funeral prayer.
