A few inches to the left and it could have been her. But the bullet did not hit her. The advertising professional lived to tell the tale. She ran and ran.
The bullet had pierced the skull of a young photo-journalist, Tahir Zaman Priyo, on July 19 in Dhaka amid the government crackdown against widespread protests against the quota system in government jobs.
“Barely a minute before he [Priyo] was shot, he told me, we will be together,” the young advertising professional told The Telegraph Online over phone from the Bangladesh capital.
The young professional, who is from Chittagong, has not returned to her Dhaka home for over a week.
“I am trying to stay with people, hoping it will help me cope better with the situation. I’m struggling with sleep, haunted by the image of him [Priyo] lying on the road and me trying but failing to bring him, running away like a coward. The thought is killing me,” she said.
The slain photo-journalist Priyo, who was in his late twenties, and the advertising professional were near the Labaid hospital on Dhaka’s Green Road around 5pm when the bullet killed him.
According to a report published in the Bangla daily Prothom Alo, the death toll in the Bangladesh protests has climbed to 209. These include two deaths at Dhaka Medical College and Hospital, one at the Mugda Medical College and Hospital and two more deaths that had happened a week ago and have been finally reported from Noakhali.
The place where the shooting happened. Sourced by the correspondent
No official figures on the death toll in Bangladesh have been released yet. A Prothom Alo report said that state-run as well as private hospitals were refusing to provide details of those killed and injured in the police action on students and protesters.
On July 19, Priyo with some of his friends, including the advertising professional who spoke to The Telegraph Online, had plans to join the protests organised by the Students Against Discrimination movement at the Bangladesh parliament. Barricades and heavy bandobast of the cops and army forced a rethink.
They chose Dhaka University as their next stop.
“Some of our friends decided to go to another friend’s house who lives close to the Science Lab. Some of our friends headed for Shahbag, few others went to the friend’s house, while I, Priyo bhai and another person whom I met that day decided to be on the road,” she said.
On one side of Green Road was a large posse of heavily armed cops, while on the other were the students. Silent. The young crowd that waited on the other side, according to the advertising professional, did not raise any slogans.
Rubber bullets, tear gas shells, and sound grenades from helicopters rained all around.
They waited at Central Road, opposite the Labaid hospital. This was around 5pm.
“This was when Priyo bhai told me, we will be together,” she said.
Next she remembered a loud explosion which she thought was a sound grenade. She along with the crowd started running along Central Road when she heard a stranger calling for help and stopped to see.
“He was dragging someone from Green Road towards Central Road and pleading to help him. I took a few steps towards the stranger and then I saw he was dragging Priyo bhai,” she said. “There was blood flowing from his head, the rest of him lifeless. Then some more bullets were fired towards us and I ran.
“I am not sure whether to grieve for him or be relieved that the bullet did not hit me,” she said.
She did not return to Central Road that evening. Nor could she join the group of friends who went in search of Priyo and found him at the morgue in the Dhaka Medical College and Hospital well after midnight.
Priyo wanted to travel to Europe on a scholarship and study photography and films. A single father, his six-year old daughter is now in the care of her grandmother.
