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Published : 15 Nov 2025, 01:15 AM
Police and families insist the two teenagers involved in an attempted arson attack on a bus in Mirpur had no political affiliations, raising questions about what drove them to take part in such a dangerous act.
The incident occurred on Thursday night on Mirpur Beribadh. Abdullah Al Saiyaf, an 18-year-old, fell into the Turag River and died after being chased by locals while he was allegedly trying to set fire to a parked bus around 10:30pm, along with others.
Locals caught Saiyaf’s friend Rudra Mohammad Nahiyan Amir Sani, who is also an 18-year-old, while a third suspect escaped.
Saiyaf was an HSC second-year student at Mirpur Naval Academy College, while Sani studies at the English-medium school Academia.
On Friday afternoon, Saiyaf’s family and relatives had gathered at Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College morgue to collect his body after the post-mortem.
Saiyaf’s father, Md Alamgir, was repeating the same statement over the phone every time he answered a call: one of his son’s friends had come shortly before Maghreb prayers to call him out. Saiyaf spoke briefly with his mother around 8pm, promising to return home soon.
Fifteen minutes later, he could not be reached over the phone.
A police officer would call the mother hours later at 1am, informing her that her son was at the Suhrawardy hospital.
By the time they arrived, Saiyaf was dead.
“After reaching the hospital, I found my son was no more,” Alamgir kept telling his callers over the phone.
A close relative, speaking anonymously, said the family has lived in Mirpur for over 20 years in their own house and that Saiyaf had grown up with strict academic guidance, leaving little room for political involvement.
“He scored a Golden A+ in SSC,” the relative said, recalling the efforts Saiyaf’s parents made to tend to their sons, always running between schools and home.
Where Saiyaf studied is also a reputed institution where discipline comes first. The relative cannot get his head around what motivated the boy to endanger his life. He demanded a thorough investigation into it.
Police say their preliminary interrogation of Sani suggests the involvement of a local leader from an Awami League affiliate organisation.
According to Darus Salam Zone Assistant Commissioner Imdad Hossain Bipul, the leader “provoked” the boys, saying video footage of a bus burning could earn them enough money to spend the whole night partying. The leader offered them Tk 5,000.
When police found it hard to believe that a nightlong party could provoke youths to undertake such an action, the youth in police custody said he and his friend were particularly attracted by the chance to drink at the party.
The families, however, find the alleged motive implausible.
“These boys come from well-off families. They wouldn’t burn a bus just for party money. But they’re young, unable to understand many things,” a relative of Saiyaf said.
Rudra’s father, on the other hand, was once a readymade garment businessman. Now he writes poems. Both of his sons study at the Academia, where every family cannot afford to send their children to study.
The attempted arson took place amid a tense political climate. The banned Awami League had called a countrywide protest and “Dhaka lockdown” from Nov 10 to 13 on the eve of a verdict in one of the cases in the International Crimes Tribunal filed against Sheikh Hasina.
Since the start of the programme, buses, trains and public transport have been repeatedly targeted by arson attacks and sporadic crude bomb explosions.
As both families and police look for answers, the central question remains: how did teenagers with no political ties and stable family backgrounds get pulled into an arson attempt that ended in one death and another arrest?
