Bangladesh Army promotes officer in coma for seven years

The Bangladesh Army has promoted Lieutenant Colonel Dewan Mohammad Tasawar Raja Chowdhury, who has been in coma for seven after a cardiac arrest, to Colonel.

Tasawar was at the Combined Military Hospital in Dhaka when he was adorned with the new rank badge on Oct 13.

He suffered cardiac arrest on Mar 11, 2013 for such a long period that it caused hypoxic-ischemic brain injury caused by oxygen deprivation to the brain, said Brigadier General Masud Majumder, medicine specialist at the critical care department of the CMH.

As the blood circulation stopped, his brain had no oxygen for a long time, which eventually caused permanent damage, the doctor explained.  

“He can move his hands and legs sometimes, but does not feel much,” the doctor added.

Tasawar’s wife Mosleha Munira told reporters that she had never thought that the Army would honour her husband with a promotion.

“But he has achieved it. Everyone knows how good an officer he had been. He had fallen sick just a month before the promotion. We are grateful to the army now. Now he will get a good farewell from the army,” she said.

Tasawar and Munira have two sons and a daughter.

An officer from the 20th BMA Long Course, Raja was born in 1967. He had performed duty in different capacities, including as a United Nations peacekeeper.  

His family say he is a descendant of mystic poet Hason Raja.

He passed SSC and HSC from Sylhe Cadet College and did MSc from the

University of Balochistan in 2004.

He has also penned books on the lives of Hason Raja and MAG Osmani, the commander-in-chief of the Bangladesh forces during the 1971 Liberation War.