Zafar Iqbal will get well soon, return to campus, hopes wife

Eminent professor Zafar Iqbal’s wife Prof Yesmeen Huq today expressed hope that her husband will recover quickly and return to his beloved campus to resume classes.

“We want him to get well soon and quickly return to the campus,” Yesmeen Huq, who is also a professor of the university, said while talking to reporters at Dhaka Combined Military Hospital.

Prof Muhammed Zafar Iqbal, who came under a knife attack yesterday at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST), is undergoing treatment at Combined Military Hospital (CMH) in Dhaka.

Zafar Iqbal made the first phone call to his wife soon after he came under the knife attack yesterday and let her and their daughter know of the attack and that he was doing alright.

“I was attacked but I am fine. I am being taken to the hospital,” Prof Yesmeen Huq quoted him as saying while talking to reporters at the hospital.

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“I did not want you and our daughter to know of the attack from television channels and that is why I called you first. I am experiencing a lot of bleeding,” she quoted him as saying.

“You (Yesmeen) talk to my students and comfort them. Make sure they do not get agitated,” the wife said quoting her husband.

Yesmeen thanks government, doctors, law enforcers 

Prof Yesmeen Huq thanked Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for the prompt action following the attack on Prof Zafar Iqbal and also thanked doctors at CMH and MAG Osmani Medical College Hospital where he received treatment.

She also thanked law enforcers for their support and for providing protection to them.

She termed the incident as unfortunate and said “I do not feel that the government should be immediately blamed for the incident.”

The couple have been threatened for the past many years, said Yesmeen Huq. “We have been even sent shrouds. But should I stop all activities? Live inside a jail? I do not think so,” Yesmeen added.

“Zafar Iqbal is in good mental health. I am requesting friends, family and well-wishers not to meet him yet on health grounds. I am not meeting him either,” she added.