Zyma Islam

The state asked for more time, and time is what they got yesterday, as Metropolitan Magistrate Md Baki Billah postponed deciding on Rozina Islam’s bail until next Sunday.

After Dragon Sweaters’ Dhaka factory closed due to the pandemic last year, former garments worker Abdul Kuddus had to sign away rights to half of his termination benefits.

Only families with critically-ill Covid-19 patients know the pain of trying to find an intensive care unit (ICU) bed at this point. ICU wards are chock-full all over the city, while critical patients have their clocks ticking.

When last year the country faced for the first time a Pahela Baishakh indoors, or the first day of Ramadan without family and celebration, the new reality was adopted with much gusto.

Researchers in Germany have found that the South African and Brazillian variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus might be able to evade “plasma therapy”.

In the capital yesterday, finding an empty ICU bed was akin to finding a needle in a haystack.

How long does it take to get a CT-scan report? A day? Perhaps two?

The first day of the ban on ride-sharing services via motorcycles stripped over one lakh bikers of means to a livelihood until further notice.

In addition to bus capacity being slashed to half, ride-sharing using motorcycles was banned beginning yesterday, leaving commuters in the capital in despair.

A 40-year-old woman was sitting in a shared kitchen in Korail Bosti, where a pan of catfish stewed away on the stove. But it wasn’t hers -- it was her neighbour’s lunch.

The number of patients at the intensive care units in hospitals, getting treatment for Covid-19, has been on the rise.

“If you come close to me you will smell the pus.”

A group of at least 55 Bangladeshis had paid recruiting agencies over Tk 3 lakh each for jobs in Algeria and the promise of illegal passage into Spain -- what they got instead was indentured labour under subhuman living conditions.

Incarcerated for over nine months, writer Mushtaq Ahmed and cartoonist Ahmed Kishore were brought into the courtroom 11 days ago and produced before a judge.

During the 53 days that journalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol spent in enforced disappearance and the additional seven months of imprisonment, the movement for his release was fuelled by the most part by his unrelenting son, activist Monorom Polok.

“I decided not to shave the beard. I’ve just trimmed it a bit, I think I quite like the beard,” laughed Shafiqul Islam Kajol, his eyes twinkling with amusement at the irony of keeping the large, shaggy, grey beard that grew out over his 53 days of enforced disappearance and seven months in prison.

They say trouble never comes alone, and to farmers around the country this saying could not have rung truer for the year that passed.

“The day feels unreal,” said Monorom Polok after his father, photojournalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol, was released from the Dhaka Central Jail yesterday.

As the year of the pandemic winds down, it becomes even more clear that Covid-19 led to an increase in gender-based violence.

Investigators have found that the murder of Maj (retd) Sinha Rashed Khan was pre-planned and they will mention it in the case’s charge sheet, which will be submitted to court soon.