The last tiffin

Nusrat will never respond to her name being called again. She will no longer carry her schoolbag to class or sit by the window to draw pictures of birds.

On 21 July, when a fighter jet crashed into Milestone School and College in Diabari, Nusrat Jahan Anika, a third grader, lost her life. That afternoon, before her coaching class began, her mother had lovingly brought her favourite food — fried rice — for tiffin. 

Mere minutes later, the fighter jet tore through the sky and crashed into the school building, filling the area with fire and smoke. Nusrat's life came to an abrupt end even before she turned 10.

It was just past 1pm. Nuruzzaman Mia was sitting at a tea stall when a deafening noise pierced his ears. Moments later, he saw a column of smoke rise from Milestone's premises. "I don't remember how I crossed the roundabout — I just ran into the school," he recounted. 

There, he saw the nose of the fighter jet lodged into the staircase of the kindergarten building. Inside, flames were raging and spreading fast. Tiny charred hands were reaching out through the grills, desperate to escape. Some children had already collapsed from suffocation.

Nusrat also died from smoke inhalation. Shakil Ahmed, her brother-in-law, had posted on Facebook about her disappearance along with her picture, name and roll number. Her body was found at CMH later in the afternoon.

Shakil's son, Jarif, was Nusrat's playmate. She would make all her demands to Shakil, who was like an elder brother to her, as she had no other siblings. Because of the Facebook post, Shakil received over a hundred calls, both from within and outside the country — mostly from strangers asking whether Nusrat had been found. Shakil replied, "Yes, she has." Many sighed in relief. But Shakil did not have the heart to tell them the rest.

Speaking to TBS on 22 July, Shakil expressed anger over the coaching business at Milestone. "Students are forced to join coaching classes, and those who don't are given lower marks. Eventually, we had no choice but to enroll Nusrat in coaching last month. Perhaps, if she hadn't had coaching, she would still be alive today — because regular classes would've been over by then," he said.

It was during the lunch break before coaching when Nusrat's mother had handed her daughter the tiffin – fried rice. She had not walked more than 100 yards when the catastrophe struck. Nusrat's mother ran back in panic, but by then, it was too late.

Nusrat lived within walking distance of the school. She loved drawing parrots, eating burgers and riding her bicycle. A large photo of her at age two still hangs in her room. When we visited her mother on 22 July, she sat in the same room, motionless, clutching Nusrat's books to her chest.

On 10 June, the whole family went to Cox's Bazar for a holiday. Nusrat had enjoyed herself so much, she didn't want to leave the water. Just a few days ago, she had made her last request to Shakil, "Bhaiya, will you take me to Cox's Bazar again?"

Family and neighbours described Nusrat as sweet and full of life. Her favourite game was hide and seek. Tanvir, an older student from the neighbouring building, used to study at his table when Nusrat would sneak in and punch his back playfully before running off laughing.

Lost in these memories, Tanvir broke down in tears. 

A little further down the road from Milestone, we met the parents of Sumaiya Annesha, an eighth grader who travels to school daily from her home in Tongi using the school van. On the day of the crash, as soon as the news broke, her mother panicked and called her father, who rushed to the school to find his daughter. After much searching, he found her — trembling in fear. Sumaiya had survived by the sheer stroke of luck.

After school ended that day, Sumaiya had stepped outside the gate to get a drink. That is when the crash happened.

Her father, Waliur Rahman, said, "My daughter is very talented. She always does well in school. We enrolled her at Milestone because it has a playground. But the pressure here is immense. They force students into coaching. I won't keep her here anymore."

That night, Sumaiya could not sleep. The faces of the children who had perished kept flashing before her eyes. She got up from the bed, trembling, saying, "They were like my siblings. They always said 'hi' to me, and called me Apa." Her parents visited the school on 22 July, leaving Sumaiya at home, to stand in solidarity with families still searching for their children.

Later, we met Tanvir Ahmed. He is preparing for his HSC exams and stays at the Milestone hostel. He was asleep in his room when the crash occurred, jolted awake by the loud noise. Looking out the window, he saw thick smoke rising from the debris.

He and his roommates rushed downstairs. "It was as if the gates to hell had opened up before us," he said. On the second floor, he saw a teacher running back and forth across the grilled corridor, trying to find a way out. He did not see what happened next, but he is certain that she did not make it; there was only one staircase, and the jet had crashed right through it into the kindergarten building.

Like his friends, Tanvir also demands that the actual death toll be published while parents are still scrambling from hospital to hospital, searching for their children.

Inside Dhaka Medical College and Hospital, hundreds of angry students were seen. Many came from Milestone's Uttara and Mohammadpur branches. Students from World University and the Bangladesh University of Business and Technology also joined in.

Grief, at this point, has been overtaken by anger and frustration. They argue that even if each of the four kindergarten classrooms had just 50 students, that is already 200. The attendance register, they say, will confirm it.

Inside the school grounds, we met two Rover Scouts who also helped with rescue efforts. One of them, Mohammad Khaled Mahmud, shared a painful memory: "While taking people to the ambulance, we saw skin peeling off the bodies of some victims. Many couldn't be touched. Some had more than 60-70% burns — it was unbearable to look at them. In one vehicle, we placed seven to eight people who had been disfigured, whose eyes were bulging out of their skulls."