PM Hasina pays tribute to Ivy Rahman

Prime minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday paid rich tributes to former president of Mahila Awami League Ivy Rahman, who was critically injured during the 21 August 21, 2004 grenade attack and declared dead on 24 August.

"In every movement and struggle, she (Ivy Rahman) was always in the field... she was there with the people. In any meeting, she used to sit with workers, she had no ego. This kind of horrific death of such a nice person cannot be tolerated," she said.

The prime minister said this while talking about the death anniversary of Ivy Rahman and 21 August grenade attack at the beginning of the weekly cabinet meeting at the Secretariat.

She attended the meeting virtually from her official residence Ganobhaban.

Sheikh Hasina, also the president of Awami League, said Ivy Rahman was the leader of Mahila AL and the wife of late president Zillur Rahman. She was involved in politics since her student life. "We did politics together for a long time," she said.

Recalling the horrible memories of the 21 August grenade attack, she said severely injured Ivy Rahman was taken to the Combined Military Hospital (CMH), Dhaka where she was declared dead on 24 August.

"Actually, we don’t know the exact date when she died. Today is her death anniversary, we pay our tributes to her," Hasina said.

In the 21 August grenade attack, 22 AL leaders and activists were killed and four of them were from Mahila AL. There were two unidentified bodies.

"Maybe those were the bodies of attackers, we don’t know anything about them, no one came to claim their bodies, but we lost our 22 leaders and activists, while 600-700 were injured," she said.

Hasina said many injured people, who recovered after taking immediate treatment, later died due to the grenade splinters that remained in their bodies.

"Many people are alive carrying splinters in their bodies."

She prayed for salvation of the departed souls and expressed sympathy to their bereaved families.

The grenade attack was carried out on an anti-terrorism rally of Awami League on Bangabandhu Avenue in the capital on 21 August, 2004 during the BNP-Jamaat government.

Twenty-four people, including then president of Mohila Awami League and late president Zillur Rahman’s wife Ivy Rahman, were killed and over 600 others suffered splinter injuries in the grisly attack and many of them became crippled for life.

Sheikh Hasina, the then opposition leader, narrowly escaped the attack but sustained hearing impairment due to the impact of the repeated grenade blasts near the truck-dais of a public rally.