Thousands of visitors are flocking to Bangla Academy premises to visit fair and have a glimpse of the sculpture dedicated to the martyrs of the Language Movement of 1952.

Chief Adviser Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed inaugurated the sculpture while opening the month-long book fair in which 255 publishers are taking part this year.

The sculpture represents the sequences of the incidents took place on February 21, 1952, the day now observed as Shaheed Dibash as well as International Mother Language Day.

"This is a beautiful work that will certainly helpful to the present generation who have no idea about the Language Movement and who are eager to learn about it," said Mesbah Uddin Khan, a student of Dhaka University who came to visit the book fair.

The sculpture has bronze-made busts of five Language Movement martyrs --Rafiq Uddin Ahmed, Abdus Salam, Shafiur Rahman, Abdul Jabbar and Abdul Barkat -- and terracotta mural representing the historic event. Besides, it contains several other scenes of rural Bangladesh, the face of a mother teaching her child and another mother carrying her martyred son which expresses her pain.

"I had a long-cherished dream to build a monument as a symbol to pay tribute to the language martyrs. We have the Shaheed Minar, but I thought we need a sculpture like this to tell the present generation about our glorious past," said artist Mofidul Alam Khan who designed the monument. He works as a re-toucher at Bangla Academy.

He built the 17-foot sculpture with the financial support from GrameenPhone and Bangla Academy. The total cost is Tk 13.43 lakh of which GrameenPhone provided Tk 10 lakh. The construction work started on November 6, 2006 and completed on January 31 last.