On the night of Aug 15 in 1975, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated along with most of his family members.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her sister Sheikh Rehana escaped the attack as they were staying abroad at the time.
Two other families had become the victim of the terror that was unleashed on that night.
One of them was the family of Bangabadhu’s sister Amena Begum and her husband Abdur Rab Serniabat, the then Water Resources Minister. The other was the family of Sheikh Fazlul Haque Moni, the founder of Jubo League and one of the most prominent organisers of the Liberation War.
The wife of Serniabat’s elder son Abul Hasnat Abdullah, Shahan Ara Abdullah, was a witness of the horrors that took place at their house on that fateful night.
She has survived four bullet wounds and shares the gruesome details of the night with Bangla Tribune this year on the occasion of National Mourning Day.
Shahan Ara, who spoke to us over the phone from Barishal, said that the memories of that night haunt her every day of her life while the wounds inflicted on her and the family intensify with the arrival of every August.
She woke to the sounds of a series of gunshots early on the morning of Aug 15 and everyone in the family gathered at Sernibat and his wife’s room out of fear. Serniabat called Bangabandhu and assessed that 32 Dhanmondi had also most probably come under attack.
The house had gone dark. Shahan Ara rang Sheikh Fazlul Haque Moni from the first floor and her mother-in-law told him that dacoits had broken into the house.
It was then that the attackers began to climb the stairs to the floor and broke into the room. The attackers gathered everyone in the living room and made them stand in a line.
One of them pointed a gun at her and asked who else was in the house. She looked at Serniabat and he gave her a signal to say nothing. She told them that there was no one else in the house.
When Serniabat asked the attackers who their commanding officer was, they said they had none and immediately opened fire on them.
Almost everyone was shot. Serniabat was lying in a pool of blood. His brother’s son had collapsed to the floor after the attackers took a direct shot at him. Shahan Ara was also shot but conscious.
When the attackers started to leave, someone began crying. The men came back once again and opened fire on them a second time. Serniabat died immediately along with six others of his family.
Shahan Ara was right behind her father-in-law and was shot in the waist. Eight others with her were battling with life and death in the house at the moment.
She recollected that another vehicle braked outside the house just about then. It was the police from Ramna station. The police rescued the injured and took them to the hospital.
The brave woman was in the hospital till October recovering from her injuries. Abul Hasnat Abdullah who had gone to make a phone call on a different phone at the time of the attack had escaped alive as the disgruntled army officers had not managed to find him.
Three generations of her family were assassinated that day: her father-in-law Abdur Rab Serniabat, her son Shukanta Abdullah Babu, her brother in laws Arif Serniabat, Abul Hasnat Abdullah’s cousin Shaheed Serniabat and his sister Baby Serniabat.
Serniabat’s wife Amena Begum, Beauty Seniabat, Hena Serniabat, Abul Khayer Abdullah, Rafiqul Islam, K M Zillur Rahman, Lalit Das and Syed Mahmud were injured in the attack.
Shahan Ara still has a hard time talking about that day and repeatedly broke out into sobs when those heart-wrenching moments sprang to life alive in her mind.
She said that that only when the fugitive killers are brought back to the country and their sentences are executed, her family might recover to some extent from a lifetime of injuries which had been inflicted on them on Aug 15, 1975.