The 48 hours that made 5 August inevitable

On the afternoon of 16 July 2024, I told my boss I was popping downstairs for lunch. Instead, I hailed a motorcycle to Polwel Market at Naya Paltan and spent the better part of an hour asking around until a shopkeeper led me into a back godown and produced what I wanted — a bulletproof jacket and a helmet. 

The jacket was much heavier than I had anticipated, with armour plating in both front and back panels. After returning briefly to the office to sign off, I headed to Dhaka University.

The previous day, I had been assaulted while covering the protests, hours after the Awami League's general secretary said the Chhatra League was ready to give protesters "a fitting reply" for their arrogance. 

By the evening of 16 July, following the killing of Abu Sayed in Rangpur, the atmosphere had changed. Rather than driving people away from the protests, his death appeared to strengthen many people's resolve. That is the part that's hardest to explain to people who weren't there: the killing didn't frighten people off the streets. It had the opposite effect.

Abu Sayed made retreat impossible

Between 2:30pm and 3pm on 16 July, in front of Begum Rokeya University in Rangpur, police baton-charged the crowd and then opened fire. Abu Sayed, a 25-year-old English student and a coordinator of the movement, stood before them with his arms flung open and his chest bared. He was shot four times and pronounced dead on arrival at Rangpur Medical College.

Five others were killed that same day. In Chattogram, at Muradpur, Md Wasim Akram, 22, a sociology student at Chittagong College and joint convener of the college's Chhatra Dal unit, was shot dead alongside Faisal Ahmed Shanto of Omargani MES College and Md Faruk, 32, a furniture-shop employee who simply happened to be on the street. In Dhaka, Shahjahan, a floor-mat seller at New Market, and Sabuj Ali, a Dhaka College student, were also killed. Six dead, over a hundred injured, in a single afternoon.

The state's reflex was to deny what everyone could see. It didn't work. Students from North South, BRAC, Independent, AIUB, United International and Dhaka International Universities shut down Bashundhara, Merul Badda, Baridhara, Notun Bazar, Kuril and Pragati Sarani, choking Rampura, Banasree and Malibagh in the process. Notre Dame College students occupied Shapla Chattar, the heart of the country's financial district. Rail lines were blocked in Chattogram and Mohakhali, while the Dhaka–Chattogram, Dhaka–Barishal, Dhaka–Rajshahi and Dhaka–Tangail highways were all cut off.

One tentacle, severed

That same day, students drove the Chhatra League out of the Dhaka University halls — beaten out, room by room. For 15 years, the residential halls had been the regime's forward garrison: the politically motivated seat allocations, the gono rooms, the compulsory attendance at rallies, all the small enforcements that kept a campus of 40,000 politically silent. Losing them wasn't just a skirmish lost — it was a tentacle severed. 

These were signs that pointed to the fact that, even if this movement eventually failed to topple Sheikh Hasina, her grip on power had been permanently loosened.

The state read the moment the same way, and drew the opposite conclusion. By evening, the Ministry of Education had shut schools and colleges indefinitely and postponed the 18 July HSC examination. 

The UGC closed every public and private university and ordered the halls vacated, ostensibly for the students' safety. Having lost control of its cadres, the party sent in the BGB instead. The movement, in response, announced a symbolic absentee funeral prayer for 17 July.

A funeral without bodies

The morning of 17 July was cloudy, with a fine drizzle. Coming out of the metro station, I saw students filing out of the halls with their bags.

The campus was thick with BGB and police in battle gear, armoured cars parked along the roads. The network had been throttled to 2G; nothing loaded.

Student leader Akhtar Hossain arrived and was hauled away by police almost immediately. I was standing in the crowd when the world seemed to detonate: two sound grenades went off right beside me, the first I'd ever experienced at that range. The ground seemed to tilt, and my helmet filled with a high-pitched, ringing noise. We surrounded an officer to ask why sound grenades were being thrown at the press. It changed nothing.

I stayed back for the absentee funeral, where empty coffins were carried in for the six people the state had killed the day before. Perhaps a thousand protesters were present, and the number was falling by the hour. By noon, the sun was merciless.

Then came the assault — from Raju and VC Chattar simultaneously — with tear gas in astonishing volumes. People scattered in every direction. My chest burned from the inside. I took cover behind a BGB vehicle next to two of their own men, who were rubbing their eyes and weeping helplessly.

The students regrouped at VC Chattar. This time, the police were ready, and more brutal still — blowing whistles, hammering their shields in rhythm, a genuinely terrifying sound. I was standing in front of a bench, giving updates to our chief reporter, when the assault began along the hall area. Two sound grenades landed directly in front of me. 

The world went black and I sat down hard on the bench, wearing five kilos of armour that was never going to stop any of this. Two colleagues from our multimedia team urged me to come with them.

I recovered just enough to run.

We drove back to the office that evening. Passing Shahbagh, I saw Chhatra League and Jubo League men checking people's phones on the street. At 7:30pm, Sheikh Hasina addressed the nation and announced a judicial probe into the deaths, urging patience until the Supreme Court delivered its verdict. Six coffins had been carried across my campus that same afternoon, and the head of government was asking the bereaved to wait for a bench.

The state emptied the halls and filled the country

I got home, convinced the movement was finished. The halls were empty. The campuses were shut. It looked, for all the world, like a route.

It was the opposite. Emptying the halls didn't disperse the movement — it distributed it. The residential halls had been the regime's instrument of control, but they were also the only container the protest had ever had: one perimeter, one gate, one police cordon. 

Closing every university and sending the students home didn't remove them from the equation — it sent them to every corner of the country, where everyone had already watched the Rangpur footage on their own phones. The state demolished the one space it knew how to police, and then seemed genuinely surprised when the whole country became the campus.

The rest came fast. On 18 July, at least five people were killed, BTV headquarters was burned, and the government shut down the internet nationwide. On 19 July, police banned all rallies in Dhaka, and a curfew followed. Every one of those measures assumed people were still weighing up the price of dissent. They had stopped weighing it up.

By 5 August, the arithmetic that had governed this country for 15 years — that the cost of resistance would always outweigh the benefit — had simply ceased to hold.