Six-year-old Mohammad Yousuf was holding a pair of sandals of his mother at Dhaka Medical College Hospital yesterday, hoping she would put them on soon.
“Ma is ill…she will put the sandals on once she is well,” he said in front of the emergency mortuary of the hospital around 1:15pm.
Little did he know that his mother Sakhina Begum, 45, will never use the sandals again as reckless driving of an illegal battery-run auto-rickshaw claimed her life a couple of hours ago.
All this happened before the very eyes of Yousuf at Tin Rastar Mor in the city’s Mohammadpur around 11:00am.
Sakhina along with her son was riding the three-wheeler on way to her daughter Afsana’s Mohammadpur house from Bagashur village in South Keraniganj on the outskirts of the capital. The two were seated on a side of the auto-rickshaw. With them were some other passengers.
When they reached Tin Rastar Mor, the auto-rickshaw driver all of a sudden took a sharp opposite turn to avoid a head-on collision with a vehicle. Within a moment, a CNG-run auto-rickshaw hit the battery-run three-wheeler from behind, throwing the mother and son off the vehicle, according to witnesses.
With critical injuries in her head and face, Sakhina was taken to Zainul Haque Sikder Women’s Medical College and Hospital and later to Dhaka Medical College Hospital where doctors declared her dead.
The kid miraculously escaped unhurt.
Defying a ban, battery-run auto-rickshaws have been plying different city streets for years, thanks to lax enforcement of law. These three-wheelers often cause fatal accidents in the city and elsewhere in the country.
Rana Hasan, who took the two to the hospitals, said he saw the kid kneeling beside the woman on the road and went to help them.
Sakhina’s nephew Babul Mia said Yousuf is the youngest among the three daughters and two sons of the deceased. His father Babul died when his mother was pregnant with him.
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