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Video Editor: Rahul Sanpui
“My brother has been coming here for 25 years for Durga puja. This is the first time his wife came with him. She came to my house for the first time, beautifully clad in a red saree. Now I will have to send her back in a white saree,” the weeping sister of late Jatan Saha tells The Quint as his wife Laki Rani Saha stands in the background, consoling her four-year-old child.
The child often asks his mother when her father is coming back, because he doesn’t want to have his meal without him. Laki, at that moment, barely holds it together.
According to authorities, over 66 houses were damaged and at least 20 homes of Hindus in Bangladesh were torched during the Durga Puja celebrations while at least six lives were claimed as a spell of violence swept Bangladesh.
Triggered by an alleged desecration incident at a Durga Puja pandal in Cumilla on 13 October, assailants attacked over 80 locations in Comilla, leading unrest and violence in several parts of the nation.
Laki adds that her son is restless and she’s barely being able to feed him or put him to sleep. Standing beside her, Jatan’s sister Muktarani expresses her ongoing fear. She is scared that they might be attacked anytime.
On the night her house was torched, all Rani Saha could do was pray to God that they spare her and her family’s life. “We don't want our wealth or anything, just our lives,” is what she kept praying as assailants broke all her windows, poured petrol on the walls and set the house on fire.
However, even as arrests are made and the situation seems to be under control, the Hindus are scared of another spell of violence, the older generation heart-broken as they never thought this could happen in their nation; and a mother asks, "Can the government bring my (dead) son back?"
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