‘Ma, keep the doors and windows shut’: Saikat’s sister recounts his killing at tribunal

“Ma, keep the doors and windows shut. There is a lot of shooting all around.”

Those were among Mahmudul Rahman Saikat’s last words to his mother during the July uprising.

On Wednesday, his sister Sabrina Afroze Sebonti broke down before the International Crimes Tribunal-1 as she recounted how her brother left their Mohammadpur home to join protests and never returned.

Sebonti testified as the ninth witness in a crimes against humanity case over the killing of nine people in Mohammadpur during the uprising.

She sought the maximum punishment for the accused, including former Dhaka South mayor Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh and former minister Jahangir Kabir Nanak.

Sebonti, a fourth-year English student at Bangladesh University, said Saikat became increasingly determined to join the protests after images of an assault on Dhaka University student Tanvir circulated on Facebook on July 15, 2024.

Despite his mother’s objections, he joined the protests.

On July 19, Saikat had Friday prayers and lunch before leaving home for Noorjahan Road.

He then stopped answering his family’s calls.

Eventually, someone else picked up his phone.

“The person whose phone this is has been killed by police gunfire. Go to Suhrawardy Hospital quickly — otherwise, you may not even get the body later,” Sebonti quoted the person as telling the family.

They rushed to the hospital.

Saikat’s bloodied body was lying on a stretcher outside the morgue, she testified. A bullet had entered the left side of his head and exited through the right.

Sebonti said she saw police firing indiscriminately at students while travelling to the hospital.

At the morgue, she said, five other bodies, including that of Raju, were lying beside Saikat’s.

Sebonti blamed what she described as the authoritarian system and its associates for her brother’s killing.

She asked the tribunal to impose the maximum punishment on those accused, naming former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, former police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, Taposh and Nanak among them.