It’s been a year since Mohammad Rustam, just 15 years old, walked out of his Mirpur home for the last time — a schoolboy with a heart full of courage and dreams of justice. His words, spoken the day before his death, still haunt his family:
“If you lock me inside, who will protest?”
On July 19, 2024, Rustam joined thousands of fellow students in the streets — voices raised against injustice, demanding a better Bangladesh. Just past 6:00 PM, near Shah Ali Market, a single bullet silenced his voice forever. He was declared dead thirty minutes later at Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital — a bullet wound in his neck, allegedly fired by police.
Rustam was not just another face in the crowd. He was the youngest of three siblings, a ninth-grader at National Bangla High School, and a boy who believed the future could be fairer — if only people were brave enough to fight for it.
His parents, Md Mainuddin, a tailor, and Masufira Begum, a garment worker, had tried to keep him home that day. Just the day before, Rustam had returned injured — struck by a rubber bullet during protests. Still, he insisted on going back.
“If every parent hides their children, who will stand up?” he asked his mother.
Now, those words live in the stillness of their home, carved into memory like scars that never heal.
“I still hear his voice,” said his father, fighting back tears. “He was our hope. Our youngest. We dreamt of sending him to university, of seeing him break the cycle of poverty.”
The family, originally from Mirzapur village in Narsingdi’s Raipura upazila, didn’t even wait for a death certificate. They buried him the next morning, wrapped in grief and disbelief.
His sister, Kulsum Akter, remembers how he had come home from Jummah prayers and seemed quiet, almost thoughtful. Then came a phone call — and without hesitation, he told their mother:
“If we don’t go to the movement, how will the country be free?”
That was the last time they saw him alive.
Rustam’s death sent shockwaves through the nation. He became one of the youngest martyrs of the historic July 2024 student uprising — a movement born from frustration, fuelled by the passion of youth, and paid for with blood.
His father still asks the same question every day: “What crime did my son commit to deserve this?” No answers have come.
For Mainuddin and Masufira, every day since has been a quiet battle — waking up in a house where Rustam’s schoolbooks remain untouched, where his schoolbag still hangs by the door.
Yet, even in their sorrow, there is pride.
“My son stood for something,” Mainuddin said. “He died for a country he believed in. But his fight isn’t over. We want justice — not just for Rustam, but for every child lost in that movement.”
A year on, Bangladesh remembers the boy who wouldn’t stay silent. The boy who believed that freedom had a price — and paid it with his life.
Rustam is gone. But his words? They still echo — in classrooms, in protests, in the hearts of those still daring to hope.
“If you lock me inside, who will protest?” No one who hears that question can forget it.