‘Ma, We Will Talk Later’

Blogger and activists Ahmed Rajib Haider had told his mother that they will talk later. But his life was brutally snatched away before he could.

Several hundred thousand enraged protesters attended the Namaj-e-janaza of Ahmed Rajib Haider, the Shahbagh movement activist who was found butchered near his Mirpur residence Friday night.

Police say Rajib’s throat was slit after he was hacked repeatedly to ensure his death.

Mother Nargis Haider said, “I spoke to him last at round 6.00pm yesterday (Friday) evening. After I called all he said was – “Ma, I’m still on the road … I will talk to you later.”

But that never happened, said his mother in a choked voice.

Rajib was an introvert as a child, she said, he would not get out of the house very often and was friends with only few people.

With this, she dismissed the theory that he might have got killed because of a personal enmity he had with someone.

His mother, an Awami League activist, said, “My son had no enmity with anyone. He never spoke ill of anyone. He also did not have any bad habits.”

“Most of the days, he used to head home straight from work in the office. At home, he worked in his laptop or read some book. He was more interested in reading books that were not text books.”

Rajib’s mother is the General Secretary of Mohila Awami League in Gazipur’s Kapashia.

His father Dr. Mohammad Nazim Uddin was a freedom fighter during the 1971 Liberation War. He took part in the war while he was still a student of higher secondary.

“My son was my friend since his childhood days. He is the one who created an account for me in facebook. His learning and understanding of some topics were so deep that I often became his student,” he said.

Nazim Uddin moved to Iran with his family in 1983 after graduating from the Dhaka Medical College. Rajib was born there. He moved to Paris for higher studies after 10 years in Iran. They permanently returned to Bangladesh in 1998.

Rajib was admitted in 5th grade once they returned to Bangladesh permanently in 1998. He later graduated in Architecture from a private university and got employed.

Rajib’s father said his son was a freelancer for the last eight months of his life. He used to live with his brother Noble and a maternal cousin in the two-room flat at Mirpur’s Polashnagar.

When asked who they were suspecting for his death, Rajib’s mother said, “This is the work of anti-liberation forces. I have a sole demand for the state – punish those who took my son away from me, so that no one else is snatched away from his mother like this.”

Rajib’s body was brought to Shahbagh at 5.30pm Saturday in an ambulance from the morgue in the Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

Thousands of people present there stood up to show respect to their ‘martyred’ comrade. They touched his coffin and vowed to continue with the protest until the people’s demands to give death sentence to all war criminals are met.