Bangladeshi American woman killed in New York

A YOUNG 24-year-old Bangladeshi-origin woman college student was crushed to death by a train in New York after some miscreants who were trying to snatch her bag allegedly pushed her on the subway tracks.

The bizarre incident has rattled the Bangladeshi American community at large in the US, especially as it got scant coverage in the mainstream US press.

Zinat Hossain was a student at Hunter Col- lege in Brooklyn and lived with her parents in New York after immigrating from Bangladesh.

On May 11 as she was waiting to board the train at the Utica Avenue station in Brooklyn at around 9 pm snatchers reportedly pushed her on the subway track, according to US based Bangla newspaper Thikana.

The police has not yet confirmed the identity of the snatchers as well as whether the incident was a hate crime, the newspaper said. Police, according to reports, believe that the snatchers were trying to take Zinat's bag and she was pushed towards the subway track.

Dr Enamul Haque who is the president of the Greater Comilla Association in New York and also the maternal uncle of the girl informed that the girl's family hailed from Daudkandi.

Her parents Amir Hossain and Jasmine Hira live in New York. Hossain's family is from the Daudkandi sub-district of Comilla district in Chittagong and has lived with her parents in Brooklyn since 2016.

According to reports, Hossain's funeral was performed in Brooklyn. Her grandfather Md. Kabir said, ‘The police report says Zinat committed suicide, but we don't believe it.'

‘They said she ‘died due to the fall'. But in actuality, this was a ‘hate crime'. Our community must unite in protest this.'

Earlier this year Asian American Michelle Go was also pushed on subway tracks in New York by a stranger on the Times Square subway station in an unprovoked incident.

Bangladeshi Americans are one of the fastest growing Asian origin groups in the United States with their number surging 263 percent over the past two decades from just 57,000 in 2000 to 208,000 in 2019, according to US Census Bureau data.