<i>Freak accident cuts short dreams</i>
Last Wednesday was just like any other day for Mehedi Hasan. He was walking back to his uncle's residence in Maddhya Badda after attending first semester BBA classes at Brac University in the capital's Mohakhali, engrossed in his own thoughts. But nothing could have prepared him for what happened next. “I could not understand what happened to me. I just saw my severed leg lying on the roadside,†he said. Mehedi, undergoing treatment at National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation (Nitor), recounted to The Daily Star yesterday the moments before the freak accident. Upon reaching the main road in Maddhya Badda, he had taken a look at both sides and carefully crossed it. Just as he was about to step onto the footpath, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a man some 10 to 12 feet before him trying to pull down a steel drum from a rickshaw-van. The drum fell with a loud bang and he felt something hit his left leg. “I fell down. I felt blood rolling down my forehead,†he said. Locals rushed him to a local clinic and later he was shifted to Nitor. Mehedi was conscious during the whole ordeal. Witnesses said the drum was empty. Iqbal Hossain, officer-in-charge of Badda Police Station, said some type of gas must have accumulated inside the drum, causing it to explode once it hit the ground. The explosion flung a piece of the drum's lid at Mehedi's direction, severing his leg from below the knee, he said. The drum belongs to a shop named Rhidoy Steel King, he said, adding that its owner and employees are now absconding and had left the drum behind. A case was filed with Badda Police Sation in this connection. Sources at Dhaka Medical College morgue, where the severed leg was sent, said the muscles were being examined to determine what was stored in the drum. Mehedi's father Abdul Kuddus Halder, headmaster of a high school in Morolganj in Bagerhat, said Mehedi was crying all the time, asking only one question, “what has happened to me?†Abdul had sent Mehedi, the eldest of his two sons, to Dhaka with a lot of expectations. “But all is ruined,†he said. Doctors at Nitor said Mehedi was out of danger and could walk with the help of an artificial leg. Despite what had happened to him, Mehedi dreams of finishing his studies and doing whatever possible to make his family proud. “After hearing about the artificial leg, I started to rethink about my life,†he said.
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