At Radda, the vaccines returned before the walls

A visit to the Radda MCH-FP Centre in Mirpur-1 leaves little doubt about the scale and ferocity of the destruction inflicted on the nearly half-century-old facility.

Whole sections of wall had disappeared. Doorways opened onto other doorways, then rubble. Blue paint peeled from the lower half of walls that no longer reached their original edges. 

A police officer sat alone on a wooden stool inside one damaged room on Monday morning, surrounded by broken plaster and fragments of masonry, looking through a window whose surroundings had been hacked away.

Elsewhere, hundreds of small medicine vials lay in a heap on the concrete floor. Syringes were scattered among them. Patient cards, registers and loose sheets of paper had been trampled into dust and broken brick.

One document bore the familiar image of a mother holding a child.

There were still signs explaining clinic hours and services. One board identified the place in English: “Board of Trustees Radda MCH-FP Centre Trust, Mirpur, Dhaka-1216.” Behind it was a building that no longer looked capable of providing much of anything.

And yet, a few metres from the wreckage, healthcare continued.

Under a makeshift arrangement, women in white coats sat behind a table covered in yellow cloth. Medicines, forms, bottles and vaccination supplies were arranged in front of them. 

Above their heads hung a banner announcing an intensified measles-rubella vaccination programme for children aged six months to five years.

“We have to keep the vaccination campaign going,” Taslima Akter, a healthcare worker administering vaccines to children, told Daily Waadaa.

Nearby, a mother had brought her four-month-old child for another dose. Asked her name, she laughed shyly and declined to give it.

“I came here for the vaccine because my child received the previous doses here,” she said.

“I am just sad that such destruction had happened here,” she said without disclosing her name.

A clinic demolished in the night

The attack began around midnight on Thursday.

According to the centre authorities and subsequent police and media accounts, roughly 200 to 250 people descended on the Radda MCH-FP Centre. Some were masked. Some carried locally made weapons. Two security guards were held hostage.

Then the looting began.

Government EPI vaccines and vaccination records disappeared, along with family-planning equipment, medicines, cash, an ultrasound machine, a generator, three refrigerators, three air-conditioners, computers, laptops, printers, laboratory equipment, CCTV cameras and furniture, according to the centre authorities.

Then came the excavator.

One permanent and three semi-permanent structures were demolished or badly damaged. Walls were knocked open and corrugated sheets and bamboo roofing collapsed into tangled heaps. Rooms that had once offered privacy to patients were opened to the sky.

Dr Nasrin Akhter, Radda's executive director, has estimated the losses at more than 1 crore taka.

The scale of the destruction matters because Radda was not an abandoned building caught in a land dispute. It was a functioning maternal and child healthcare centre serving largely low-income communities in Mirpur.

The centre says it has operated in the area under an agreement with the government since 1976. On an ordinary day, health workers serve about 120 to 150 people.

By early Friday morning, much of that infrastructure had been reduced to masonry, splintered bamboo and twisted corrugated metal. The men who took over the premises left their own declaration behind.

Signboards and banners bearing the name “Somomona Dokandar Samabay Samity Limited” — a shopkeepers' cooperative — were erected at the site.

The destruction, in other words, was followed by a claim.

The underlying dispute over the land stretches back years. But on Thursday night, it was a large group entering a functioning health facility after midnight, restraining guards, removing property and using heavy machinery to demolish buildings.

The centre filed a case with Shah Ali Police Station naming Mohammad Hanif Mia, a former member of BNP's Dhaka North city unit, and about 250 unidentified people.

Hanif has denied involvement. Speaking to Samakal newspaper, he said allegations against him were “false and fabricated” and suggested he might have been implicated because he intended to contest an election. He called for a proper investigation.

The men before the mob

The more consequential question is not simply who entered Radda, but who organised them.

Reporting by Prothom Alo newspaper has pointed to several local figures associated with BNP politics.

According to that reporting, people began gathering at about 12:05am near an office by the B-Block field associated with former Shah Ali thana Chhatra Dal convener Abul Kalam Azad, also known as Lenin, and Hanif.

They then moved towards the health centre.

Sources cited in the report said the group collected sticks, ramda machetes, hammers and other weapons near Chhinnomul Market before the attack. Some tied cloth around their heads and covered their faces.

The report named Shah Ali thana Chhatra Dal Joint General Secretary Awlad Hossain, known as Nada Awlad, and Ward 93 BNP Joint Convener Md Elias as figures who allegedly led vandalism and looting at the site.

It also reported that an excavator used in the demolition was arranged by Maruf, a former joint secretary of Shah Ali thana Chhatra Dal, with help from a man named Soleman, who does not hold a party position.

Residents and other sources told the newspaper that Hanif, Abul Kalam and former Dhaka Metropolitan Jubo Dal member secretary Mostafa Jaglul Pasha, known as Papel, moved around the area in a white microbus during the destruction and gave instructions.

Attempts by the newspaper to reach the three for comment were unsuccessful. Waadaa independently collected contact number one and tried to contact him but couldn’t get it.

The political connections become more complicated around BNP reserved-seat lawmaker Ferdousi Ahmed, known as Misty. Hanif, Abul Kalam and Papel are known locally as close to Ferdousi, according to the reporting. Hanif is also her relative.

Ferdousi has denied involvement.

She told Prothom Alo that she had once been associated with the cooperative and, while serving as a ward commissioner, signed an application in 2006 seeking allocation of the land in its name. She said she had had no involvement with the organisation since then.

“I am not involved in this incident,” she said. “Beyond that, I know nothing.”

The cooperative itself has an unusual political history, according to local sources. Some people associated with it, including Gazi Shah Alam and Abdur Rahim Hazra, were previously involved in Awami League politics, the sources said. After August 5, 2024, they allegedly began working with local BNP figures through the cooperative.

Its listed office is on the fourth floor of Baishakhi Super Market near the Mirpur-1 bus stand. On Sunday, it was locked. Neighbouring shopkeepers said the room was frequently closed and had not opened since the attack.

The police who watched

The most damaging detail to emerge over the weekend concerned not the attackers but the people expected to stop them.

Police were at Radda while looted property was being loaded onto a pickup, according to preliminary findings of a police investigation. They took no effective action before the vehicle left, Waadaa learned from multiple sources .

A local grocer, Nur Ali, told The Daily Star newspaper that he saw a police vehicle at the scene but did not see officers intervene effectively.

Only after the looting did the attackers proceed with dismantling the facility, he said.

Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed acknowledged on Sunday that preliminary evidence indicated police inaction and negligence.

Shah Ali Police Station Officer-in-Charge Jahangir Alam was withdrawn and attached to Dhaka Metropolitan Police headquarters. Departmental proceedings were expected.

The question of police conduct hovered over the ruins on Sunday.

Tasnim Jara, the physician and politician, came to Radda and looked through what remained on Sunday. She noted that the centre had served the community for nearly 50 years, providing vaccination as well as maternal and child healthcare.

She also pointed to a less visible consequence of the raid…vaccination records had disappeared.

“Without those records,” she said, “Determining when some children should receive their next doses becomes more difficult.”

Jara also publicly questioned how an attack lasting hours could proceed after police had been informed. She also said allegations of land, house and shop grabbing were emerging across Bangladesh, many involving local BNP figures.

Later, NCP spokesperson Asif Mahmud Shojib Bhuyain arrived with party leaders and activists on Sunday

He walked through the wreckage and spoke to patients who were still receiving care. NCP activists pulled down one of the cooperative's signboards, blackened another and removed a banner.

Asif demanded arrests and an independent investigation.

He focused on the machinery. An excavator is difficult to hide. So are trucks. Their arrival at a healthcare centre after midnight should, he argued, have prompted police to establish immediately whether anyone had legal authority to demolish the premises.

By then, Radda had become part crime scene, part clinic and part political destination.

Aminul Haque, the state minister for youth and sports and a BNP leader, also visited on Sunday. He said the facility would be restored and services resumed from Monday, and promised reconstruction within a week.

On Monday morning, the gate reopened at about 6:30.

Dhaka Metropolitan North Jubo Dal activists led by unit member secretary Sajjadul Miraj were present as the premises reopened. Workers began removing rubble. The Radda sign returned. Vaccination services moved back inside the damaged compound.

The reconstruction had begun before the investigation had established the full chain of responsibility for the destruction.

The clinic among the rubble

On Monday, more than 100 children received measles-rubella vaccines at the improvised site. One vaccinator, Kohinoor Begum, had returned to work roughly 36 hours after the attack.

“It’s our duty to be back here,” Kohinoor said, “But the ruins of the building hurt me.”

Inside, within the broken rubbles, patient cards scattered across broken masonry like playing cards after a table has been overturned. Mounds of medicine vials were lying on the floor on Monday. In another room, a wall clock lies face-up among debris, detached from the wall it once measured time for.

Outside, mothers waited.

One woman told Waadaa that she had previously been able to sit inside with her child. Now they had to wait outdoors in the heat. Her baby was uncomfortable and crying.

For poor families in Mirpur, this was the practical meaning of a land dispute settled with an excavator.

Physician turned politician Jara put the question bluntly…where would a pregnant woman who could not afford an ultrasound at a private clinic now go?

But by Monday, the politics around Radda had widened.

Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer and Leader of the Opposition Shafiqur Rahman visited the damaged centre in the afternoon and announced that his party would provide 50 lakh taka toward its re-establishment.

“This is the beginning, not the end,” he said, promising further assistance if needed.

He also alleged that an operation of this scale could not have occurred without protection or patronage from figures associated with the ruling party. That remains a political allegation, not an established finding of the investigation.

Ten people arrested in connection with the attack had meanwhile been sent to jail. Police had not publicly established that those detained included the people alleged to have planned or directed the operation.

That distinction matters.

The destruction of Radda required more than men willing to swing hammers. Someone had to assemble a crowd. Someone obtained an excavator. Someone brought vehicles. Someone knew that a decades-old health facility could be attacked for hours in the middle of Dhaka. And, according to preliminary police findings, officers were there for at least part of it.

On Monday, amid the reconstruction, the ruins still preserved the sequence.

A section of bamboo roofing hung broken over an open space. Corrugated sheets leaned at angles among timber and masonry. A policeman stood inside a room stripped nearly bare. Through a roughly smashed opening in another wall, two men could be seen talking in the next room, framed by exposed red brick.

The place had the quality of a building whose interior had been turned outward.

Yet the old signs remained. “CLINIC TIME,” one read.

—