Dr Azad's death

What kind of contract Dr Azad had with Pen International? Usually if a fellow dies during his or her active duty as a fellow in foreign land , the sponsor comes forward to meet the expenses of sending the dead body to his or her near and dear ones. In this case the Pen International seems to be inactive. The reasons are best known to them.

The death of Dr Azad has been to a certain degree politicised, which is not very unusual if you analyse the events leading to his death. There must be some hard facts of his sudden death in Munich. There are standard procedures to determine that. I only hope the results of that procedures will be revealed in due course to his family members, who are the ones to be consoled first.

There is an uncertainty about bringing Dr. Azad's body from Munich on Friday. Uncertainty because it involves a lot of money(about 3 lakh) to carry the body to Bangladesh. Who will give the money? Hardly is it possible for a university teacher's family to manage such a huge amount at a time. So naturally we have noticed some delay in starting the process. Last night, I heard from Channel I news that the DU Teachers Association has contributed the whole amount .

The foreign minister once said our intellectuals are responsible for the negative image of the country. Will the image of the country brighten when the Germans are watching that the dead body of Dr. Azad is lying at a mortuary?

Kamaluddin Ahmed, Shyamoly, Dhaka

Living with different brands of local 'godfathers', i.e., 'Bangla Bhai' and continuous bomb blasts in mass gatherings may lead people to deny the possibility of murder of Humayun Azad, because that could only add to our existing helplessness.

It is more frightening to accept the possibility that those people planned the killing in Germany after failing to kill him in Dhaka. However, the death of Humayun Azad in Munich has satisfied the desire of the killers.

Nasrin Siraj Annie, Independent Anthropologist and Media worker, Sub-editor: www.meghbarta.org

I think the Dhaka University Syndicate has taken a good decision. They turned down the request of Dr. Azad's family to bury his dead body beside the university mosque.

Almohit, On e-mail

From a news report in The Daily Star of 17th August, 2004, I have come to know that the bereaved family members of Professor Dr. Humayun Azad have put forward a demand to the DU authorities to bury the dead body of the professor beside the grave of our national poet Kazi Nazrul.

This demand is completely incoherent with the life and thoughts of Dr Humayun Azad.

Khairul Hasan, Surrey, UK