PM Pays Heartfelt Tributes to Ivy Rahman

Prime Minister Sheik Hasina paid a heartfelt tribute on Monday to former President of the Mahila Awami League, Ivy Rahman, who was seriously wounded in a grenade attack on August 21, 2004 and eventually declared dead on August 24, reports UNB.

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

The Prime Minister said this while talking on the death anniversary of Ivy Rahman and August 21 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 August-21 grenade attack, she said seriously injured Ivy Rahman was taken to the Combined Military Hospital (CMH), Dhaka where she was declared dead on August 24. 

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

"maybe they were the corpses of the attackers, we know nothing about them, nobody came to demand their heads, so we lost our 22 members and activists, while 600-700 were injured," she added.

Hasina said that several injured people who survived after receiving urgent care subsequently died as a result of grenade splinters that persisted in their bodies.

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

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

The barbarous grenade assault was carried out on the Awami League anti-terrorism rally on Bangabandhu Avenue in the capital on 21 August 2004 during the BNP-Jamaat government's effort to wipe out AL leadership.

Twenty-four people, including the president of the Mohila Awami League and late President Zillur Rahman's aunt, Ivy Rahman, were killed, and more than 600 others sustained splinter injuries in the grisly assault, and several of them were disabled for life.

Sheik Hasina, then leader of the opposition, barely survived the assault but suffered hearing loss owing to the effects of the frequent grenade explosions near the truck-dais of the large public rally. AL men protected her life by forming a human shield around her.