He stopped short for a while only to glance back at his mother with a smile before stepping out of the house near Dhupkhola field in Old Town of Dhaka at about 11:00am on August 5.
Sheikh Mehdi Hasan, a Class VII student of Will Power School, was carried dead into the house for the last time three hours and a half later. The body had marks of bullet wounds.
Mehdi, 14 years old, sneaked off to Chankharpool with a friend of his to join the student-mass uprising. The law enforcers shot him there twice in the head. He was pronounced dead at Sir Salimullah Medical College Mitford Hospital at about 1:30pm.
He was the youngest of two children of Sheikh Jamal Hasan and Sonia Ahmed Liza.
Sonia with her daughter, a Class XII student at the Motijheel Ideal School and College, went to the college in solidarity with the protests.
Sonia received a phone call when she was there at the college. The caller told her that Mehdi had been wounded. She hurried back home but was devastated to find Mehdi dead.
鈥楬e was talented and brave,鈥� Sonia said at her house on September 9. Sonia recalls having offered him rice with mashed garlic in the morning that day. It was then he told his mother that he had attended the protests twice before and distributed food there.
A friend of Mehdi鈥檚 who was there on the scene said that Mehdi had gone too close to the police and was pelting stones. He had tried to persuade Mehdi to come back, but Mehdi refused.
鈥極ur children were our gems. They had no faults. I am proud that my son stood for justice. I now want justice for him and for all who were killed,鈥� she said.
Mehdi鈥檚 family along with others on the father鈥檚 side lived in the same building. Everyone loved Mehdi as he was the youngest of all the cousins. His death left the entire extended family in a state of shock.
The government on August 28 said that about 1,000 people had died in student protests that culminated into a mass uprising, bringing down the Awami League government on August 5.
