They found their missing son finally, but not alive

The 18-year-old boy, Shakil Ahmed, then a student of class nine, fled home at Shibchar in Madaripur on January 2 last year after he failed his annual examinations. Since then, he had been working in a hotel at South Kalyanpur in Dhaka as a waiter.

On Wednesday night, he was electrocuted at the kitchen of the hotel. The hotel staffs immediately rushed him to Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) where the doctors declared him dead.

Receiving a phone call yesterday morning, his parents, Suruj Matbar and Selina Begum, rushed to the capital only to find their only son lying on the corridor of Dhaka Medical College morgue.

They were not prepared for such a terrible shock as the caller told them Shakil was injured and admitted to the hospital.

Seeing the body of Shakil, his mother, who came all the way from Madaripur hoping to get back her son after 15 months, started wailing and went mad.

She hurled anything she found there at the onlookers while his father, who came back to the country from Kuwait after his son went missing, fainted.

"Shakil's parents spent around Tk 3 lakh in search of their son," said Shakil's maternal uncle who phoned them after one of Shakil's colleagues informed him of the incident.

He said the hotel authorities never told them Shakil was working there although they knew his address. They came to us only when Shakil is not alive, said his uncle who also runs a hotel at Purana Paltan.