Ipti, the only son of Md Younus Sardar, a car driver, and Minara Begum, a household services worker, dreamt of a day when he could help his parents to keep them off the daily drudgery.
But, the day will never dawn as the 16-year-old boy died after being shot in the head between 12:30pm and 1:45pm on July 19.
It happened near the Rampura police station in Dhaka when clashes broke out between the students who sought reforms in civil service job reservations and the law enforcers
鈥楲ife seems empty without him,鈥� Younus said on September 26.
Ipti, who stopped going to madrassah and took up a job in a garage four years ago, often told his parents of the good days ahead that he dreamt of.
鈥楧on鈥檛 worry. I will run the family soon. I鈥檓 learning the trade fast. I only need to learn a few more skills,鈥� he told his parents.
Younus did not know why Ipti ventured out of the house that day. Ipti would, however, go to Aftabnagar at the weekend with his friends to play or take a bath in a pond.
The family learnt of his death when his friends took the body to their rented house in the Madhyapara neighbourhood of Rampura at around 5:00pm.
Heeding his neighbours, Younus took the body to Dhaka Medical College Hospital for a post-mortem examination at about 10:00pm. But he was still unaware of the hard time that lay ahead.
He needed to return to the Rampura police station for clearance and he had to walk all the way as the situation on the road was tense. He reached the police station at about 3:00pm only to find that it had been burnt.
The two police personnel on guard there that time declined any help. Younus returned home exhausted.
He went to the hospital again on July 20 and could lay his hands on the document which a police officer in plain clothes handed him there.
But, there was more in store. He came to know that there other bodies ahead and he had to wait until the next morning.
Younus finally received the body about midday on July 21 and buried his son that night in a village in Kishoreganj, where his grandparents on the mother鈥檚 side lived.
Younus, who lost his house at Mehendiganj in Barishal to river erosion long ago, has a daughter, who is married off.
He and his wife earned Tk 19,000 a month and had a mind to buy a piece of land in Kishoreganj.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party at Kuliarchar in Kishoreganj gave him Tk 1,00,000 after Ipti鈥檚 death. He has come to know that the government could give him Tk 500,000. The couple would try to buy a piece of land with that money.
The protests that had continued for July flared into a mass uprising towards the end of the month, finally toppling the Awami League government on August 5.
The Directorate General of Health Services on September 24 came up with a preliminary list of 708 having died in the protests and subsequent uprising. The figure, however, could be rising.