Every Eid, millions of Bangladeshis leave the cities and head home. The highways fill up. Buses run through the night. And somewhere along those roads, not every family arrives together.
This year is no different.
At least 204 people have been killed and more than 600 injured in 264 road accidents during the ongoing Eid-ul-Fitr travel period, according to the Road Safety Foundation. The data runs from March 17 through midday on March 24, pulled from newspapers, hospital records, police stations, social media, and the foundation’s own field teams. Every figure has been verified. And the count isn’t finished yet.
Travel continues until March 28. The casualties will likely rise. A final report is expected in early April.
The second day of Eid was the deadliest single day recorded so far, with 28 lives lost. On Eid day itself, at least 10 people were killed and 25 injured across eight districts. One detail stands out amid the grim figures: a recent fuel shortage appears to have reduced motorcycle use this season, which likely held the numbers back somewhat. The actual toll could have been worse.
For context, last Eid-ul-Fitr saw 249 people killed and 553 injured across 257 accidents, though that covered a full 11 days. This year’s count is already close, with several days of travel still remaining. Among last year’s dead were 41 women and 59 children.
The Road Safety Foundation has pointed, again, to the same underlying failures: inadequate traffic enforcement, weak road safety awareness, and systems that simply cannot handle the strain of an entire country moving at once. These aren’t new problems. They surface every Eid, and every Eid the warnings sound the same.
The full report will come in April. But the story it tells is already taking shape on the roads, in the families that won’t make it home, and in a crisis that keeps repeating itself.
