Alib Hossain and his mother outside the Domkol hospital. Telegraph picture

Domkol, May 18: Nazrul Islam sat for a lunch of rice and vegetables around 10am today so that he could go to vote.

A Congress supporter, Nazrul, 50, a small farmer at Ghoramara village in Domkol, had asked his only son Alib Hossain, 20, to wait for him as he had planned to go to the polling booth together.

Alib, a first-time voter, did not listen to his father and left for the booth alone when Nazrul sat for the early lunch.

As Nazrul mixed the rice with the curry, he could hear shouts from the polling booth at the village primary school, only 200 metres away.

He sensed trouble and that was confirmed in seconds, when the rice in his hand fell with the deafening sound of blasts, one after the other.

“As soon as he heard the explosions, he stopped taking his meal. He looked at me and asked me where Alib was. I told him he had gone to cast his vote. He stood up, hurriedly washed his hand and walked out of the house,” said wife Marjia Bewa, 45.

This was the last time Marjia saw her husband.

Nazrul was hit by two bombs in his stomach and legs and killed yards away from his house.

Razzak Sheikh, 40, a neighbour, said he saw Nazrul walking briskly towards the booth when Congress and CPM supporters were hurling bombs at each other.

“Nazrul was desperately looking for his son in the queue without paying heed to our shouts. We repeatedly asked him not to go into the booth. But he was looking frantically for his son. Soon, I lost him in a haze of smoke. Everyone was running helter-skelter. Some of us pressed forward and fo- und Nazrul lying in a pool of blood,” said Razzak.

Some more bombs were hurled and Razzak and the rest of the villagers ran for their lives.

Hearing that her husband was lying outside the booth, Marjia ran to it.

“We took his blood-splattered body in a cycle van to the Domkol subdivisional hospital, where doctors declared him dead,” said Marjia.

Razzak’s son Alib had fled the scene at the first hint of trouble.

“I hid inside a house about 300 metres away. When I heard about my father, I ran towards the hospital and met the villagers who were taking him there. My family has always supported the Congress,” said Alib.

His debut as a voter has to wait. “I could not vote because of the trouble. How can I live with the fact that my father died because I went to vote without him?” he said, sobbing.