The move came after the Cabinet Committee on National Awards withdrew the award posthumously conferred on him.
In 2003, when the BNP-Jamaat coalition was ruling, the award was posthumously bestowed on the country’s first military ruler Zia and the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
The then opposition leader and Bangabandhu's daughter Sheikh Hasina, now the prime minister, had protested against the move.
Ziaur Rahman |
Cultural Affairs Secretary Aktari Mamtaz said the medal and the certificate have been removed from the museum at Dhaka's Shahbagh.
"The Cabinet committee had written us to remove those from the museum and collected it from us," she told bdnews24.com.
Museum authorities handed them to a Cabinet division official on Wednesday, added Aktari.
A deputy director of the museum told bdnews24.com that the medal and certificate was given to the Cabinet division official around 12:30pm.
He said the medal and certificate have been in display since 2003. It was taken off from the display gallery in 2007 during the military-backed caretaker regime.
The BNP, now led by Zia's wife, Khaleda, has reacted sharply to its founder being stripped of the award, saying it will prove to 'suicidal' for the Hasina administration.
More on this story