Sheikh Russel

Sheikh Russel was born on October 18, 1964, at the historic Bangabandhu residence on Road 32, Dhanmondi, Dhaka. Named by his father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman after the celebrated British philosopher, mathematician, and pacifist Bertrand Russell, young Russel brought radiant joy to a family perpetually enduring the political turmoil, arrests, and incarcerations of the Pakistan era.

A student of Class Four at University Laboratory School in Dhaka, Russel was an energetic, compassionate boy who loved riding his small bicycle in the Dhanmondi house courtyard, playing with pets, and listening to stories of the Liberation War. Growing up in the shadow of the monumental struggle for Bangladesh's independence, he frequently had to visit his father in central jail, early on learning the deep sacrifices required for freedom.

On the tragic dawn of August 15, 1975, during the brutal assassination of Bangabandhu and his family by a cabal of renegade military officers, ten-year-old Russel was heartlessly murdered. His innocent question to the assassins—"I want to go to my mother"—remains an indelible wound in the national conscience of Bangladesh. Today, October 18 is officially observed across Bangladesh as "Sheikh Russel Day" (National Children's Day observance), honoring the rights, safety, and luminous potential of every child.