As the adage goes when the heart is closed words are few, the nation gets stunned with profound shock as the birthday of Sheikh Russel arrives.
Things were happening before little Russel, but he could not understand what was actually happening. The assassin bullets just took away from him everything he loved.
Sheikh Russel, also the youngest brother of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, was born on October 18 in 1964 at the historic Bangabandhu Bhaban at Dhanmondi in the capital.
The 57th birthday of martyred Sheikh Russel, the youngest son of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, will be observed today (Sunday).
On August 15 in 1975, Russel was brutally assassinated with most of his family members, including his father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, when he was a student of class four at University Laboratory School.
At the time of the brutal killing, Sheikh Russel was merely a slip of a boy and it supersedes human imagination that the killers did not even spare the little boy in their wholesale massacre of the family. This is an unprecedented example of diabolical killing in world history. The recollection of Russel’s story gives the nation a heart-rending trauma from which it is difficult to recover.
Sheikh Russel was a tiny tot who keenly longed for the company of his father. But the Bangabandhu because of his round-the-clock engagement in politics could give very little time to his youngest son. The deprivation of the constant filial affection of a father ached the heart of the little boy.
To cite the example: Russel once asked her eldest sister Sheikh Hasina if he can call her father as Abba (father). It was, as though, little Russel craved the company of his loving father who had very little time to shower his love even for the boy who deserved it most. It speaks eloquently of the yearning of the tiny boy for love from his father. The hectic political life of the Bangabandhu kept him frequently away from his family.
The perpetrators did the pogrom to achieve the political interest. It is beyond the sense of any sane man that a little boy can be killed for serving the interest of some political group.
