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At least 23 people, including students, injured in the violence during the movement of the Students Against Discrimination and the subsequent student-led mass uprising, have had their limbs amputated at the National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation and Dhaka Medical College Hospital in the capital as of Thursday. 

Of the 23 people mostly with bullet wounds, 18 have lost one leg each, while five have lost one hand each. 

The national traumatology institute has amputated the limbs of 21 people, including 17 who lost one leg each.

While the institute could not collect data on all the victims’ professions, they were able to confirm that at least five were students.

Dhaka Medical College Hospital reported that they amputated a leg of one individual and a hand of another wounded person, of whom they could identify only one as Shah Alam, 32, who was shot above the knee at Jatrabari. Both the individuals left the hospital after their operation.   

Many victims, mostly with limb injuries, are still undergoing treatment, with 106 people, including 45 students, admitted to the national traumatology institute and 16 to the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital as of 5:00pm on Thursday.

Some of these patients remain at risk of losing their limbs. 

Nineteen-year-old Atikul Islam, a sales person at a fashion house who wanted to go abroad, was shot in his right hand on August 5 in Uttara’s Azampur. To save his life, doctors at the traumatology institute amputated his hand on August 7. 

‘Many dreams I had, but now everything seems dark,’ said Atikul, the youngest of six children of furniture businessperson Jalal Uddin, putting on a smile on his face. ‘With the amputation, life has changed, and so have the dreams. Now, I have to find new dreams to move forward.’

The dream of becoming an army officer was crushed under the wheel of a police vehicle when it ran over Abdullah Ahmad, 18, at about 12:30pm on August 4, as he fell onto the road during a clash in Mirpur 10. 

Ahmad was initially taken to his hometown Madaripur with several broken bones in his right leg and head injuries, fearing repercussions from the ousted Sheikh Hasina regime due to his direct involvement in the movement. He was later admitted to the traumatology institute on August 7 just a couple of days after the fall of Hasina regime. 

‘Since I cannot be an army officer as I will never be able to bend my right leg, I am considering studying computer science and engineering,’ said Ahmad, an 11th-grade student at Adamjee Cantonment College.

His friends visited the hospital on August 27 after finishing their final exams for 11th grade, which Ahmad missed as the doctor said his right leg would need at least a year to heal.

Despite the setback, Ahmad, the eldest of Bilkis Akter’s two children, is determined to sit for the HSC exam in 2025. 

Md Rakib, 19, was doing apprenticeship to become a barber for the past five months as his passport was ready for him to go to Dubai.

But all his dreams shattered when he received a bullet just above his knee on the Dhaka-Chattogram highway at about 6:00pm on July 20 while returning home, resulting in him losing his left leg.

‘Rakib cried a lot, begging not to have his leg amputated, but the doctors had to do it to save his life. He doesn’t talk much now, and he cries whenever we try to get him to walk,’ said Rakib’s mother Rina Begum.

Traumatology institute deputy director Md Badiuzzaman said that the admitted patients were currently out of danger, but their condition could become anytime critical from contracting infections.

At least 718 people, mostly with gunshot woulds, were treated at the hospital with more than 400 admitted there from July 16 to August 28.

The Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital treated 272 people with limb injuries from July 15 to August 28, with 88 of them being admitted. 

It performed 39 major surgeries and 66 minor surgeries. 

The department’s associate professor for spine surgery Md Shahidul Islam Akon said that that some people might lose their limbs later as well, and that those who received limb injuries were mostly aged between 30 and 40.

He also said that anyone needing an artificial limb implant could contact the hospital. 

On August 16, a ‘Preliminary analysis of recent protests and unrest in Bangladesh’ by the office of the High Commissioner of the United Nations Human Rights revealed that at least 650 people were killed and thousands other were injured  between 16 July and 11 August. 

On August 28, the interim government’s health adviser Nurjahan Begum told the media that more than 1,000 people were killed in the recent student-led mass uprising.