Shaheen Mollah

During Ramadan, all the eateries and food stalls on the streets are thronged by people right before iftar. This is the busiest hour for street vendors selling mouth-watering food. They call out to their potential customers, enticing them with the usual spicy, crispy and fried food items.

Although traffic congestion has become way too common in the capital, the Eid shopping spree and ongoing construction work of metro rail in the middle of roads has exacerbated its severity.

Over a house in the capital’s Mirpur area, a banner hangs reading: some men in civilian clothes introducing themselves as law enforcers abducted Mohan Miah on June 10, 2018.

Hours after Ataul Islam died in a road crash on October 12 last year, his family filed a case against the driver hoping to get justice. But Sub-inspector Riazul Islam got in the way.

Early morning every day, a reserved spot in Mirpur’s Pallabi sees no less than a thousand pair of eyes looking at every passer-by in hopes that someone will call for work.

It is already one of the most crowded spots in the city on any given late afternoon of the year. Factor in the added rush of thousands of commuters to get home for iftar with family in the month of Ramadan and a massive blockage to the metaphorical artery of the city’s road transport system, Farmgate has become dire straits for the working class posted in the vicinity.

Traders in Dhaka's Kachukhet area get ‘death sentence’ over phone if they dare turn down the demand of the caller. Many listed criminals are demanding and taking extortion money from businessmen and traders in some parts of the city, police say.

With its sun-kissed stretches of sand, shimmering blue and jagged coastlines battered by white breakers -- Cox’s Bazar sea beach never gets old.

Twenty-year-old Shahadat Hossain Shyamol sits on the floor on the space between the elevators and stairs of the fourth floor of Dhaka Medical College Hospital’s burn unit, a gunshot-wound in his foot and police cuffs on his hand, and two police personnel keeping watch.

A politically-affiliated murderer may just be planning his big comeback. At least that is what the locals in his area believe. For them, it is a nightmare come true.

In a perfect juxtaposition of poverty and progress, a rail-track beneath the Bijoy Sarani-Tejgaon flyover slithers its way past rows of shanties and a makeshift bazar where a few hundred vendors offer what appear to be everyday groceries.

Despite a government promise that price of essentials would not rise before Ramadan, a section of unscrupulous wholesalers and retailers have yet again begun charging people more for those.

Md Yusuf and his three brothers have no other means to earn their livelihood after they have lost all their six shops in a fire that ripped through the Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) kitchen market in the capital's Gulshan-1 and gutted over 200 tin-shed shops on March 30.

He dodged death miraculously despite falling from the 19th floor of the Banani high-rise FR Tower while escaping Thursday's devastating fire that claimed at least 25 lives and left scores injured.

Rumki Akhter and Maksudur Rahman had fallen in love while working at a travel agency. Eventually, they got married three years ago and dreamt of owning a flat. With their savings, they bought a flat in the city's Gendaria, which was almost ready. They were scheduled to shift there within next two months.

It was lunchtime on Thursday and Polly Begum's phone was ringing. It was her husband Atiqur Rahman.

Exhausted and terrified, Saifur Rahman, employee of Amraa network office on the 17th floor of the 22-storey Faruk Rupayan Tower in the capital's Kamal Ataturk Avenue, sat on the pavement near the building.

The scene at a slum in Bhasantek area of Mirpur in Dhaka resembles that of a ravaged wasteland in a dystopic world, with hundreds of lives stranded under the sky, two days after a fire engulfed the slum.

Nothing can console Rupa Begum. She lost her two-and-a-half year old son in a fire at Bhasantek slum in Dhaka's Mirpur area early yesterday. Her only child drowned in a ditch inside the slum when the occupants were fleeing from the flames.

Amidst a hail of flaming cans and other flammable objects, courageous locals emerged as first responders to Wednesday's devastating fire which engulfed the four-storey Haji Wahed Mansion in Chawkbazar's Churihatta.