Nazim Hossain, a 16-year-old youth, was returning home from an embroidery training centre on Saturday afternoon when a bullet pierced his left leg. He fell to the ground in front of a 10-story building on Dhaka-Chittagong Road at Kanchpur in Narayanganj.

“A bullet hit my left leg; I felt a searing pain and was screaming. I saw people running around randomly,” said Nazim, whose left leg was amputated to save his life at the National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation (NITOR).

“Now, I am fighting for my life with an amputated leg amid nightmares at the hospital bed,” he stated with a heavy heart.

“My son fell on the road with a bullet injury. Local people rescued him and informed us. We took him to a hospital in Narayanganj, where they bandaged the wound leg and transferred him to Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH). The DMCH doctors then referred him to NITOR,” said Nazim’s mother Mariam Begum.

“My son was learning embroidery at a factory named ‘Asha Punching’. He didn’t do anything wrong or get involved in any protest, so why such a fate?” she questioned.

“The doctor told us that his arteries were torn and muscles were damaged, so they had to-amputate his left leg on Monday. He has to stay more than one or one-and-a-half months for recovery,” Mariam Begum added.

Mentioning that her husband is a rickshaw puller, Mariam questioned how they would bear the treatment costs of their son.

Similarly, another bullet-injured youth, Rakib Hossain, 19, is fighting for his life with an amputated leg in the hospital bed of the Casualty-2 Ward of NITOR. A bullet hit his left leg when he was returning home after closing his father’s grocery shop on Chittagong Road on Saturday evening.

Rakib, the son of Md Kabir from Muradnagar in Cumilla, whispered while speaking with this correspondent. He sustained bullet injuries when clashes erupted in the area in the evening.

Local people took him to a local hospital and then to NITOR. “To save my life, doctors amputated my bullet-injured leg from the thigh,” he said.

Sharif Khan, a private car driver, admitted to the Casualty-2 Ward of NITOR with a bullet injury on his right hand. A bullet hit his hand on Friday afternoon while he was returning home in the Natunbazar area of the capital.

Another youth, Nadim, 18, a tenth grader, was injured by a bullet when he was returning home from a grocery shop in the Rayerbagh area of Dhaka on Friday afternoon. The doctor conducted two operations on his bullet-injured leg, and he is now suffering with an external leg fixator in the hospital bed.