Published : 13 Mar 2026, 09:20 PM
Updated : 21 Aug 2026, 03:28 PM
People are flocking to the home of Abdur Razzaq at Shehala Bunia in Bagerhat’s Mongla Upazila.
All are shell-shocked. There are no words. Only the sound of crying as family, friends, and neighbours mourn those killed in a fatal road crash in the district's Rampal Upazila.
Razzaq and eight members of his family died in the tragedy.
His neighbour Sharif Habibur Rahman said: “Never have I seen so many bodies together before. I can’t stand it.
“This house was supposed to be filled with laughter and joy, but only tears are flowing.”
A head-on collision between a Navy bus and the microbus carrying a bride, a groom, and their family members killed 14 people, including Razzaq, at Rampal.
Razzaq was the BNP president of Ward 8 in the Mongla Municipality and the father of Abdur Rahman Sabbir, the groom.
Among the others killed are Sabbir’s wife Marzia Akter Mitu, her sister, Lamia, and their grandmother.
Sabbir owned a mobile phone shop, and Mitu was a madrasa student.
A visit to the house on Friday morning, this correspondent found the bodies of four women had been kept there. The corpses of five other victims were found on the premises of the Upazila council building.
Razzaq’s younger brother, Md Sazzad Sardar, was standing next to the bodies. He said he and his family grew up in Mongla despite being born in Khulna’s Koyra Upazila.
“Razzaq Bhai married off his daughter in Koyra, and his son married there as well. But now an accident has destroyed everything,” said a sobbing Sazzad.
Several members of the family, including father and son, had gone to Koyra’s Naksha area for the wedding of Sabbir and Marzia on Thursday morning. They were returning to Mongla with the bride and some of her relatives when they got into the deadly crash.
On Friday morning, the nine bodies were sent to Mongla while four of the other bodies, including that of the bride, were sent to Koyra. The body of the microbus driver was taken to Rampal Upazila in Bagerhat.
A survivor is being treated at Khulna Medical College Hospital.
Razzaq’s relative Md Abdul Alim, who also attended the wedding ceremony in Khulna, said his daughter-in-law and his only granddaughter were among the dead.
Nine stretchers were brought from nearby mosques, and the bodies were put on them after being washed, said Sazzad.
Their funeral prayers were scheduled for after the Friday prayer service at the Upazila council building before their proposed burial at the municipal graveyard.
Mongla Upazila Parishad’s former vice-chairman Md Nur Alam Sheikh said: "Who will comfort whom? Who is responsible for these deaths?"
