Sunday, December 28, 2014


4 year old Jihad who fell in a 400ft tubewell and died.


Abdul a 6-8 yr old boy who lived in a slum near the Dhaka Mirpur zoo left home some times around the evening as his mom told him to bring some wood and dry fallen twigs so she could cook in her traditional old fashion wood burning stove. Little Abdul went to the Zoo hoping to find plenty of twigs as there were plenty of trees in the zoo. It was way passed closing time and the zoo was empty. Abdul sneeked in avoiding being seen by the watchmen. Inside Abdul began picking up those dry twigs as every other day. Sooner or later he arrived near the Tiger's cage. Abdul saw some dry leaves and twigs inside the safety barrier. The safety barrier keeps zoo visitors at least a yard apart from the main cage so no unexpected unwanted incident may occur. Unaware of the potential danger and obviously attracted to the dry leaves and twigs, Abdul climbed over the 2.5-3ft safety barrier and ends up dangerously close to the cage. Busy gathering fallen old dry tree branches Abdul din't have a clue that the tremendous beast with a lust for raw flesh in the cage behind him was stalking him. He din't hear or see a thing as the tiger skillfully approached him.

What happened next is simply too terrifying to be written here.

The incident of tiger taking a little boy (who was picking up sticks) occurred 15-17yrs ago in Dhaka Mirpur zoo. I was only a little kid back then. I don't remember the exact date/year or the boy's name (Abdul is a name I used to write the story so readers will understand it easily). The horrific death of the child shocked everyone. His death was probably hundred times terrifying then the recent top of topics Ziaur Rahman Jihad, a four year old who fell in a 300-400ft pipe and died horribly. After Abdul's death the zoo athourity put reinforced metallic net around the tigers cage so tiger won't be able to put it's paw out of the Cage. The bone chilling accident and stains of Abdul's blood shocked the nation and the zoo athourity.

Decades passed and we all forgot the heart breaking terrible death of poor Abdul, just like very soon we're going to forget Zia aka Jihad's terrifying death .. And until another Jihad/Abdul become victim of carelessness.


Whenever I go out in the street I see children running dangerously in the street. The other day I saw a little girl rope skipping in the middle of the bussy highway in front of Jamuna future Park. And these two boys, just see in the photo. Again every year many children die of drowning as no one watches them as they wonder dangerously close to the bodies of water. I mean seriously, what are their parents doing? Why aren't their families teaching them not to go there. Or keeping an eye on them. Why is society so careless. Again Often working parents are forced to leave their children home as work place have no facilities to keep children near them in job time, why?
Another problem is that the system is totally faulty as streets are literally filled with death traps. Loose wires, open gutter, bad roads, any thing could happen any time.

But as usual after each Jihad/Abdul incident, we will argue/debate/discuss for sometimes and then after a few days we again will totally forget everything, just like we forgot all about Abdul and just asi we soon will forget all about Jihad until the next kid ..

When will we be more cautious ???

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