Baby Maudud had lot more to give: Shahara

Senior journalist, rights activist and former parliamentarian AN Mahfuza Khatun, better known as Baby Maudud, had a lot more to give to Bangladesh, a ruling Awami League leader has said.

“She led a very simple life,” former home minister Shahara Khatun recalled on Friday. “She was very affable.”

Baby Maudud lost a long battle with cancer on July 25. She was 66.

She was the Social Affairs Editor at bdnews24.com.

Bangabandhu Academy organised a memorial service for the late journalist at Dhaka.

File Photo

“If she were alive, Baby Maudud would have given more to society and the young generation,” Khatun observed.

The Awami League leader said Maudud helped her close friend Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in her writings.

“The nation will remember Baby Maudud for her contribution to Bangabandhu’s unfinished memoir,” Khatun said.

Born on June 23, 1948 to judge Abdul Maudud and Hedayet-un-Nisa, Maudud started her career in journalism in 1967 and worked for the BBC, Daily Sangbad, Ittefaq, BSS, and Weekly Bichitra before joining bdnews24.com.

She always identified herself as a journalist first and foremost.

“Baby Maudud was a good journalist. She took me to her Weekly Bichitra office when she was editor,” Khatun fondly recalled.

Despite coming from a respectable Muslim family, she got involved with progressive politics in her student days, said senior Awami League leader Suranjit Sengupta.

Maudud joined the East Pakistan Students Union while studying at Dhaka University in the ‘70s.

She served as a member of the Rokeya Hall Student Council from 1967-68 before graduating in 1971.

In the '90s, she was a vocal supporter of the movement pressing for prosecution of suspected war criminals.

Baby Maudud was elected to a reserved women's seat in the 9th Parliament on Awami League nomination and served as a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Ministry of Social Affairs.

She wrote regularly on various issues and published several books, mostly for children.

“I never saw her quarrel with or shout at anyone,” Dhaka metropolitan Awami League’s Vice-President Foyez Uddin Mia said.

“She was a very gentle person.”