If he would live now, he would be 56 years old today. He was murdered at age 10. My 9-year daughter asks me who is he and why he was killed? I replied I can only answer the first one. Who is he? The 2nd question “why he was killed” is still unknown, but maybe we can try to find out together. His name is Russel. He was one of the children of the Bongobondhu Sheik Mojibur Rahman, the first president of Bangladesh and the father of the nation. He could not get enough time to get along with his father to play compared to other kids in the city. His father spent most of the time in jail since he was the leader of the liberation war of Bangladesh.
The Pakistani government was always after him before the independence and the conspirators were always conspiring after the country got independence from Pakistan. Russell used to think that the jail is his father’s permanent address. Russel lived with his mother in Dhanmondi. When he goes to meet his dad in jail, he pulls his dad’s hand and told him to come to live with him in his mother’s house at Dhanmondi. He asks his mother that why his ‘baba’ does not live with them? When all his friends have a father at the home, why his father is in jail? He was too young to understand that his father was busy rebuilding a war broke country after the independence. His father is one of the greatest leaders on the Earth who leads a country to its independence.
The innocent mind did not get it that the conspirators’ group considered his father a threat. He makes Bangladeshi people aware of equal rights and urges people to fight for justice like Dr. Martin Luther King. His father participated in the language movement in 1952 that leads to the independence of Bangladesh. The conspirators are afraid that if he lives longer, he would bring much more trouble for the conspirators. So he was busy with people but his family. One day when his father was at home, the conspirators sent a group of the derailed armies who were wearing black masks covering their whole face and leaving only their nose and eyes open. They transgressed into the home forcefully and shoot his father, mother, brother, and sisters to death. They spotted Russell in another room. Russel was so shocked to see the act of armed forces against the unarmed civilians. He ran to his caretaker Roma and asked, “ are they going to kill me?. Roma assured that they would not kill him since he is just a minor. Russell cried by saying that he wants to go to his mother. The masked killers asked one another about Russell, “what we would do with this baby snake?” Russell thought that the masked people may let him go because he is a child. But the killer drags him inside the home by hand. Russell saw all his family members are dead. He requested them to send him to his sister, Hasu Apa. The killer’s hand grabbed Russel’s hand as if it was biting the child’s hand. Shivering ran through his backbone. He understood that they would not let him go. They are going to kill him too. He begged for his life. He shouted by saying that he would do whatever they want like a slave for his whole life. The masked man who stood behind him pulled the trigger and shoot Russell in the back of his head, the bullet pierce through his head and came out of his forehead. He fell on the blood-stained floor.
How was the feeling of the child when the bullet was piercing through his head?
How a nation can claim to be civilized when the killers of a child whose father is the father of that nation but the mastermind of this crime are still not punished? How some of the murderers are still hidden? Why the truth is still in darkness?