U+09BD "ঽ" Bengali Sign Avagraha Unicode Character

U+09BD "ঽ" Bengali Sign Avagraha is a diacritical mark used in the Bengali script to indicate the elision or omission of a vowel, typically occurring when a word-initial vowel sound is dropped in sandhi or compound word formation, similar to an apostrophe in English. It is placed above and slightly to the right of the preceding consonant or vowel character to denote the absence of that vowel in pronunciation, and it occurs primarily in Sanskrit-derived texts and formal literary Bengali. This sign is distinct from other diacritics and serves to clarify the phonological structure of words where vowel deletion has taken place.