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Published on May 16, 2015
"I didn't come home as the leader of Awami League. As your sister, daughter and a worker of Awami League being imbued with the ideologies of Bangabandhu, I want to stay beside you," the newly inducted president of Awami League said this in reply to the mammoth gathering of 15 lakh people who converged at the then Kurmitola Airport in the city to receive her on her return home on May 17 in 1981 wrapping the six-year's exile abroad.
A literally weeping Sheikh Hasina after getting back home among her people after 34 years, said, "I have been watching millions of familiar faces in the mass gathering but I do not see my beloved father Bangabandu, mother, brothers and many other near and dear ones. My younger brother Russell would never come back affectionately to call me 'Apa' (elder sister) again. Losing all of my family members, you are now my only close ones."
Earlier on the fateful night of August 15 in 1975, Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman along with most of his family members were assassinated in a military putsch. As both of his daughters, Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana, were abroad they escaped the carnage.
In the three-day national council of Awami League (AL) in the city between February 14 and February 16, Sheikh Hasina was unanimously elected as the president of party in her absence.
Amid a stormy inclement weather and a rain-drenched city, Sheikh Hasina draped in a white handloom 'Saree' with black stripes landed before her mammoth crowd at the then Kurmitola Airport in the city on board a flight of Indian Airlines from New Delhi via Kolkata at about 4-32 pm.
She burst into tears when AL central leaders including Abdur Razzak
garlanded her profusely and the roaring masses, who rushed to the runway of the airport, chanting slogans like "We are giving you commitment Sheikh Hasina, we will take revenge of Bangabandhu's killing".
As the whole capital city was turned into a city of slogan-chanting people who came to receive their leader on that day, it took at least three hours for the truck carrying Sheikh Hasina and other leaders to reach her reception venue at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar from the airport.
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