Chittagong AL stalwart, former mayor Mohiuddin Chowdhury dies

Chittagong Metropolitan Awami League President and former mayor ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury has died, bringing the curtain down on a glittering political career spanning over five decades.

The 73-year-old breathed his last around 3am on Friday at a hospital in the port city, said the family.

The passing of the populist politician has cast a pall on Chittagong.

A freedom fighter, Mohiuddin Chowdhury was elected three times to the mayor’s office, serving the Chittagong City Corporation for 16 years.

President Md Abdul Hamid and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina have expressed their condolences over the demise of the veteran politician.

He had been suffering from heart and kidney complications for a long time and was put on life support at Max Hospital at Mehedibagh in Chittagong on Thursday evening.

He returned from Dhaka to the port city two days ago following a surgery in Singapore.

The former MP was taken to the city’s Max Hospital on Thursday afternoon for kidney dialysis.

“He felt discomfort during the dialysis. We put him on life support at the intensive care unit in the evening,” the private hospital’s Managing Director Dr Liakat Ali had earlier told bdnews24.com.

Mohiuddin Chowdhury’s aide Osman Gani earlier said the veteran Awami League leader was brought to the hospital for routine dialysis.

He was taken off life support around 3am after his son Mohibul Hassan Chowdhury Nowfel arrived to Chittagong from Dhaka.

“He had suffered a cardiac arrest after he was brought in to the hospital. He was transferred to the ICU and later put on life support. But he was taken off from it as he was not responding,” Nowfel, an organising secretary of the Awami League, told the media at the hospital.

Leaders of the Awami League’s Chittagong Metropolitan unit said the funeral prayer of their late president will be held at the Laldighi grounds in the afternoon. He will be buried at the family graveyard.

The son of railway official Hossain Ahmed Chowdhury and his wife Bedoura Begum, Mohiuddin Chowdhury was born on Dec 1, 1944 in Chittagong’s Raujan Upazila.

After graduating in 1967, he enrolled for masters in Islamic Studies at the Chittagong University and later in the law college, but dropped out.

He had been involved in politics from his college years and served as Chittagong Metropolitan Chhatra League’s general secretary in 1968 and 1969.

During the 1971 Liberation War, he formed the ‘Joy Bangla Bahini’ and was arrested by the Pakistani forces.

He, however, was released from the jail when he managed to convince the army that he was mentally instable.

After he was released, Mohiuddin crossed the border into India and was appointed as the commander of a freedom fighters’ squad in the training camp in Uttar Pradesh’s Tandua.

Following the 1975 assassination of Bangabandhu, he formed an armed resistance, but went to India later after he was prosecuted for treason and returned in 1978, according to his autobiography.

Mohiuddin Chowdhury served as president of the Awami League’s student, youth and labour affiliates in Chittagong.

He contested twice from a Chittagong constituency in the 1986 and 1991 general elections but was never elected to parliament.