Dr Mohammad Fazle Rabbi, a distinguished physician and professor at Dhaka Medical College, devoted his life to treating people and serving those in need. A specialist in clinical medicine and cardiology, he was known for placing the welfare of his patients above differences of religion, identity or community.

His life, however, was brutally cut short during the final days of the 1971 Liberation War, when targeted abductions and killings intensified across Dhaka.

The memories surrounding Dr Rabbi’s final days have endured because they reveal not only the violence of that period, but also the depth of his commitment to his patients.

On the nights of 13 and 14 December 1971, his wife, Jahanara Rabbi, reportedly had the same unsettling dream. In the dream, she was visiting a place with her three children, wearing a white cotton sheet, where something covered in white cloth stood between four black pillars.

On the morning of 15 December, she told her husband about the dream. Dr Rabbi responded calmly: “Perhaps you saw my grave.”

The remark frightened Jahanara. As the situation in Dhaka deteriorated, she urged her husband to contact acquaintances and fellow academics. Dr Rabbi made several telephone calls, but many of the people he tried to reach were unavailable.

The city was then living through the final and most uncertain days of the war. Military aircraft could be heard overhead, while explosions and shelling added to the atmosphere of fear. Movement was severely restricted, with curfews imposed across the city.

On the morning of 15 December, the curfew was relaxed for only a limited period. Despite the danger, Dr Rabbi decided to use the opportunity to visit a patient in Old Dhaka.

The patient was a non-Bengali.

His wife reportedly tried to persuade him not to go. Dr Rabbi, however, remained determined to fulfil his duty as a physician.

“Do not forget, they are human too,” he told her.

The sentence has since become the most enduring expression of his humanitarian outlook. Even amid a war marked by violence and deep communal divisions, he saw an ill person first as a human being in need of medical care.

Dr Rabbi visited the patient and returned home before the curfew resumed. He then had lunch with his family. The meal included leftover curry from the previous day. Yet while eating, he remarked that he had enjoyed such a good meal that day.

For his family, those ordinary words later became part of the painful memory of his final afternoon.

Jahanara wanted the family to leave their home that evening and seek safety elsewhere. Dr Rabbi agreed to the possibility but suggested that they wait until the afternoon had passed a little.

The wait did not last long.

A cook suddenly came running to inform the family that their house had been surrounded. A mud-covered microbus was reportedly standing outside. Members of the Rajakar and Al-Badr forces, along with Pakistani soldiers, were said to be present in the area.

Dr Rabbi understood what was happening. Speaking quietly to his wife, he said that they had come to take him.

He then asked the gatekeeper to open the gate.

At around 4pm, he left the house with the men who had arrived for him.

For his family, that departure marked the beginning of an agonising wait. Dr Rabbi’s body was found on 18 December 1971, only days after his abduction.

Born on 22 September 1932, Dr Mohammad Fazle Rabbi was 39 when his life was brought to a violent end. His death came at a time when intellectuals and professionals in Dhaka were being targeted in the closing stages of the Liberation War.

His story therefore remains part of the wider history of the killings that accompanied the final days of the war. But beyond the circumstances of his death, his life continues to be remembered for the principle that shaped his work: a patient was, above all, a human being.

His most remembered words — “Do not forget, they are human too” — carry particular significance because they were spoken at a moment when fear, violence and division had reached extraordinary levels.

For decades, Dr Rabbi has been remembered not merely as a physician who treated patients, but as a doctor who remained committed to his professional and moral responsibilities even when doing so placed his own safety at risk.

He spent his professional life writing prescriptions intended to save lives. In the end, his own life was taken by those who had chosen violence. Yet the humanitarian principle he expressed so simply has outlived the circumstances of his death.

A prescription can treat an illness. Dr Rabbi left behind something less tangible but equally enduring: a reminder that compassion should not depend on identity, background or circumstance.

On his birth anniversary, remembrance of Dr Mohammad Fazle Rabbi is therefore also a remembrance of the values he represented — duty, compassion and respect for human life.

His medical work belonged to his profession. His final words became part of his legacy.

“Do not forget, they are human too.”

With profound respect, Dr Mohammad Fazle Rabbi is remembered as a physician who remained committed to humanity until the very end.