Mominul Haque got the job only three months ago. His father, Faridul Haque from Bashkhali, spoke to his son regularly. He said Mominul seemed happy enough. But a phone call on Saturday upended their lives for good, bdnews24.com reports.
Mominul, 27, told his father there had been repeated blasts at his workplace.
The call disconnected. Faridul, frantic, tried to get through to Mominul many times as he heard news of the blast.
Ten minutes later, he received another call. This time it was even worse.
“Father, my leg has been blown off," Mominul said over the phone. "Please recite kalma and pray for me.”
The father could clearly hear his son's screams of pain.
“Mominul was still holding his phone and was crying - 'I have fallen down. Someone please help me get up',” Faridul, a man in his fifties, said.
“That was when the call disconnected. That was my last conversation with my son,” he said while crying for his son at the Chattogram Medical College Hospital morgue.
Mominul began work as a computer operator at the privately run BM Container Depot three months ago.
The fire killed at least 32 people and injured scores of others at a container depot in Chattogram’s Sitakunda on Saturday.
One of them was Mominul. He graduated from Mohsin College in Economics and joined the job, said his cousin Tayeb. “Mominul went to the depot at around 8 pm on Saturday,” Tayeb said.
After speaking to his son, Faridul called his relatives in Chattogram and asked them to go to CMCH. Later, Mominul’s uncle Khorshed Alam went to the hospital and found his dead body. Mominul has two siblings.
Officials said more than 100 people, including workers, policemen and firefighters, were injured in the fire that erupted around 9:30 pm on Saturday.
As many as 10 policemen and 53 others were admitted to CMCH as of 11:45 am on Sunday.
The fire spread due to the explosion, said Shahjahan Shikder, a deputy director of the fire service.
Local journalist Mizanur Rahman Yusuf said the explosion was heard from as far as three kilometres away.
Initial reports suggested the fire had originated from chemicals, said Nurul Alam Dulal, senior station officer at Kumria Fire Station.
