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Published : 16 Oct 2025, 03:11 PM
Capt Shahabuddin Ahmed, Bir Uttom – a Liberation War hero known for his role in air missions such as Operation Kilo Flight – has died at the age of 77.
He died at his home in Dhaka’s Gulshan around 8am on Thursday, according to his son Capt Taposh Ahmed.
Shahabuddin had been suffering from conditions related to advanced age for a long time.
When the war broke out in 1971, Shahabuddin was a pilot for Pakistan International Airlines. He is among the few civilians to be recognised with the Bir Uttom award for bravery during the war.
The funeral prayers and state funeral will be held at 4:45pm at the BAF Base Bashar parade ground. Shahabuddin will then be buried in his hometown of Faridpur.
After joining Pakistan International Airlines in 1968, Shahabuddin went to Karachi for training. While living in West Pakistan, he began to develop an understanding of its discriminatory treatment of East Pakistan.
At that time, out of the 300 pilots in the PIA, only 30 were Bengali. When Sheikh Mujibur Rahman started the Six-point Programme, Shahabuddin realised that a separate organisation for Bengali pilots had to be formed.
He and his colleagues intended to form an organisation called the “East Pakistan Airlines Pilots Association” (EPAPA), but opposition from the Pakistani government initially stopped them.
Eventually, they were able to form the organisation with the backing of the judiciary. Captain Alamgir Sattar was named the head of EPAPA. After Mar 25, the Pakistani occupying forces killed Capt Alamgir and three other Bengali pilots.
Since Sheikh Mujib’s speech on Mar 7, Shahabuddin had been mentally preparing for war. During the Mar 25 massacre, he realised that it was time to begin fighting. He was in Dhaka at the time.
After the curfew was lifted on Mar 27, Shahabuddin left his family, including his mother and father, in Raipara village in Dhaka’s Bikrampur and crossed the border to India via Kushtia with his brother-in-law.
On Apr 3, the Pakistani Army bombed the town of Chuadanga and reduced it to ashes. Around that time, Shahabuddin went to Kolkata alongside a group of Indian journalists.
When news of his arrival was published in the “Statesman” newspaper, Indian Air Force pilots came forward to help him.
He was then assigned the responsibility of blowing up a “power plant” in Sylhet’s Sajibazar, Sylhet. For this, he travelled from Kolkata to Agartala. However, a Titas Gas engineer halted the electrical installation of the plant, and the operation was not needed.
Meanwhile, a few more PIA pilots had crossed the border to Agartala and submitted requests to the Indian government to get aircraft. They were asked to submit proposals on behalf of the Bangladesh government.
Then, the Bangladesh Air Force was formed through the tireless efforts of then prime minister Tajuddin Ahmad and Group Captain Air Vice Marshal AK Khandker.
The Maharaja of Jodhpur gave them a Dakota plane, while the Indian Air Force gave them an Otter plane and a French helicopter.
None of them were fighter aircraft. All of them were civilian aircraft. But they were then decorated in military colours.
On Sept 28, 1971, Air Chief Marshal PC Roy of the Indian Air Force and Air Vice Marshal AK Khandker of Bangladesh formally inaugurated the Bangladesh Air Force in India’s Dimapur.
The air force consisted of nine pilots. Of them, six were civilians and three were previous members of the air force. They were Air Vice Marshal Sultan Mahmood Bir Uttom, Flight Lieutenant Shamsul Alam and Flying Officer Badrul Alam.
Then, their military training began. They could not fly their planes above 200-250 feet because if they flew higher than that, the Pakistani radar would detect their planes.
The conditions for training flights were very dangerous, as whenever there was a little cloud cover, the visibility would drop drastically in Nagaland. Nevertheless, they completed their training in the third week of October.
On Nov 3, a plan was made to attack Dhaka with helicopters and Chattogram with the Otter aircraft. The main target in these two cities was the aviation fuel depots, from where the aircraft fuel was supplied. However, the plan was eventually suspended.
That attack was eventually carried out at midnight on Dec 3. The Bangladesh Air Force attacked the Pakistan Air Force fuel depot at Godnail in Dhaka’s Narayanganj with helicopters and another fuel depot in Chittagong with the Otters. The code name of that operation was Operation Kilo Flight.
Capt Shahabuddin and his comrades triumphed over the Pakistan Air Force within 48 hours. After their attack, the Indian Air Force began attacking the main airports in Bangladesh.
On Dec 5, the skies above Bangladesh were completely cleared of enemies. During that time, 50 attacks were carried out by helicopters on the Pakistani forces. Shahabuddin participated in 12.
Recalling his war days in an interview given to bdnews24.com in 2017, he said that he had not felt any fear of death because his main goal at the time was to protect innocent people and save his “motherland”.
