Hundreds to attend vigil for UC Berkeley student killed in Bangladesh attack

Hundreds of students are expected to attend a vigil Tuesday for a fellow University of California Berkeley classmate who was killed last week during a terrorist attack at a restaurant in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Tarishi Jain, who was studying at UC Berkeley, was one of 20 hostages killed Friday night during a standoff at the Holey Artisan Bakery in Bangladeshi capital. Authorities said armed extremists stormed into the bakery, saying they wanted to kill non-Muslims. In a battle with security forces, six attackers were killed.

Two other U.S. students, Abinta Kabir and Faraaz Hossain, both students at Emory University in Atlanta, were also killed. All three had attended the American International School in Dhaka, according to classmates.

They had gone to dinner that night at the popular restaurant, according to UC Berkeley.

Hosted by the Associated Students of the University of California, students will gather at noon at the campus’ Sproul Plaza to honor Jain and the nearly two dozen other people killed in the attack.

“She was a very talented young lady with a passion to make a positive difference in the world,” UC Berkeley donor Subir Chowdhury said in a statement. “It is not just a loss for India or UC Berkeley, but a loss for the world.”

After graduating from the American International School in Dhaka, she joined Berkeley in 2015, where she was an active member of the International Student Advisory Board.

Jain, 18, was an Indian national who was an incoming sophomore studying the growth of e-commerce. Through UC Berkeley’s Subir and Malini Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies, she was interning for the summer at the Eastern Bank Limited in Dhaka.

The daughter of a textile merchant and industrialist in Dhaka, Jain helped create EthiCAL Apparel, a clothing line whose profits were invested in small loans to help low income families without access to banking services.

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She was expected to leave with her father this week to attend a large family reunion, the university said.

Jain was laid to rest Monday. Photographs of the funeral showed Jain’s grief-stricken mother collapsing into the arms of mourners who tried to console her.

“We mourn our student and classmate Tarishi, we stand with her family and friends. We stand with our many colleagues and friends in Dhaka touched by this violence,” according to the university’s Institute for South Asia Studies

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