Gazipur crash kills schoolboy waiting to go home with father

A seven-year-old schoolboy met a tragic end as a speeding covered van hit him while waiting for his father to return home after school in Gazipur’s Sreepur upazila this afternoon (19 April).

Deceased Tanvir Islam Arian was the son of Sajal Islam, a garment worker from Dinajpur Sadar upazila and a second-grade student of Keowa Purbo Khondo Government Primary School in Sreepur upazila. 

The family has been living in a rented house in the Keowa Bazar area.

According to witnesses and others, Tanvir left the school with friends, stood near a house, and was waiting for his father to return home.

At that moment, the goods-laden covered van, which had been stationary, suddenly began reversing and hit and pinned him against a wall, leaving the boy dead on the spot, and casting a pall of grief over the school.

“He was waiting to cross the road with his father, but the vehicle took his life in a moment,” said the school’s head teacher Mahbubur Rahman, expressing deep sorrow.

Enraged locals seized the vehicle, although the driver managed to flee. Police later recovered the body, said Lutfur Rahman, sub-inspector of Sreepur Police Station.

Legal action will be taken accordingly, he added. 

In March alone, At least 98 children were killed in road crashes across Bangladesh in March, underscoring the growing toll of unsafe roads on the country’s most vulnerable.

A total of 532 people died, and 2,221 were injured in 576 road accidents in the month, according to a report by the Road Safety Foundation compiled from national dailies, online portals and electronic media.

Children accounted for nearly one in five of the fatalities, while 66 women were also among the dead.