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'Kill me please'

Burnt fruit vendor cries in pain, agony

Staff Correspondent
Patients at the burn unit of Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) were in pain as sorrow, anger and fear of uncertainty filled its air yesterday.
"Kill me please. Living like this is too painful," 48-percent burnt Farid Miah was saying repeatedly in a pleading tone to his son Swapan and any nurse or medical staff nearby. Tears were rolling down his cheeks.
A fruit trader, Farid had fallen victim to an arson attack on a bus Friday morning in front of Ruposhi Bangla Hotel in the capital. His ordeal made him desperate for a quick relief, be it death.
Shahina Akhter, who suffered 64 percent burns when the bus was torched, glanced at Farid from her bed at the DMCH.
"Shahina's situation has been deteriorating.... What if she ends up being in a state like him when she can no longer endure the pain?" said her anxious sister Shahida.
She implored the government to arrange for better treatment abroad, if necessary, for Shahina.
"The burn unit is the best facility in the country (for burnt patients]. Yet doctors fear infection because there are so many patients. What if her limbs get infected and have to be amputated?"
Shahina claimed she is a daughter of a freedom fighter.
"My father AS Ghuznavi was a commander of sector-8 in Jessore," she said, seeking help from the government in remembrance of her father's contribution to the country's independence.
Mohammad Lokman, a vegetable trader who sustained 11 percent burns, mostly on the face and chest, inside a pick-up in Gazipur on Wednesday, was seen crying inconsolably. His eyes were swollen and shut.
"My second daughter is in her first year of college. I wanted to see her going to university," he sobbed.
Lokman, who had jumped off the burning truck, regrets surviving the blaze.
" I thought that only my face had been burnt.
I doused the flames with my muffler. Now doctors tell me that my breathing tract has been burnt and I am critically injured. If 1 knew that 1 would live to watch my family getting ruined, I would rather have preferred to die," Lokman said.
Saiful Alam Biltu, a bus helper, from Chittagong, who had suffered 41 percent burns on December 24, was asking everyone in the hospital on Friday whether any bus had been burnt since that morning.
He intended to know if his children, who had set off from Manikganj that day, would reach Dhaka safely.
Biltu's wife was attending to him at DMCH and so their seven- and two-year-old children had been with relatives for a while.
"I keep fearing that they will be attacked.... They will not be able to tolerate the pain of burn injuries," said a worried father.
Badly burnt pick-up driver Nuruzzaman, 25, was brought to the burn unit last night from Gazipur. Arsonists hurled a petrol bomb at his vehicle around 7:30pm, burning forty percent of his body.
His brother Mozammel was with him, but escaped unhurt. "My brother is barely talking now. But when we came under attack, he was crying and calling me for help. I can never forget that moment," said Mozammel.
"We bought the pick-up a year ago from our savings. We've been reduced to paupers," he lamented.
Nuruzzaman has two children aged three and two.