'I'm going home, baba': Fahmin's last words to father

"'I'm going home, baba,' he told me and left us forever," said Sheikh Abu Zafar, father of Sheikh Fahmin Zafar. 

Fahmin, a student of Tongi Government College, was killed in a clash between police and quota protesters in Uttara's Azampur on 18 July.

Fahmin spoke to his father one last time on the phone around 10:30am on the day he was killed. 

"I told him not to stay outside and go home. He said, 'I'm going.' But he never came back to us," Abu Zafar told The Business Standard this afternoon. 

Abu Fahmin Zafar. Photo: Collected

Abu Zafar currently resides in Bospara area of ​​Rajshahi city. He has three sons. The youngest son, Fahmin, passed SSC in 2023 from Rajshahi Collegiate School and was a first year science student in Tongi Government College in Gazipur. He lived with his mother at his uncle's house in the capital's Dakshinkhan area.

Speaking to TBS over phone, Abu Zafar said, "Fahmin has been very talented since childhood. He wanted to become an engineer when he grew up.

"On 18 July around noon, he died of a gunshot in his back. His friends took him to Uttara Crescent Hospital but the doctors could not save him. He died on the spot after getting shot with pellet bullets." 

Fahmin was buried the next day at Taratia village in Naogaon's Atrai, he added.

Fahmin's mother Kazi Lulul Makmin still could get over the pain of losing her child. She is still unable to believe that her beloved child is no more.

"Fahmin was very talented. He wrote poetry, acted, and participated in various cultural activities. Despite not being taught to draw, he drew good pictures. Also, he won a prize in the Math Olympiad while in school. Because Fahmin wrote poetry, I was known as 'poet mother' to the mothers of her friends," said Makmin.

"On the day of the incident, Fahmin left the house around 10am. I didn't stop him. Around 2pm, I got news that Fahmin was shot," she added.