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Published : 10 Dec 2020, 07:52 PM
He passed away at the United Hospital around 12:40 pm on Thursday, said Haroon Habib, secretary general of the Sector Commanders Forum.
Shaheed, a vice-president of the forum, had been sick since Nov 1 when the doctors removed a tumour from his brain, said Haroon.
The former secretary then caught COVID-19 and later recovered from the disease, but the doctors kept him on the ventilator as his condition did not improve, the secretary general of the forum added.
It was initially decided that Shaheed would be buried at the Cantonment Graveyard in Dhaka, but his fellow freedom fighters in Tangail wanted to pay last respects to him.
The body will be kept at a hospital mortuary and his son and daughter will make a final decision on his funerals and burial on Friday, said Haroon.
Shaheed was born in Tangail’s Thanapara in 1947. His father Moulvi Abdur Rahim Ichhapuri was an Islamic scholar and a leader of the anti-British independence struggle.
Shaheed became involved in student politics in 1962 and joined the movement for Bangladesh’s freedom from Pakistan. He was president of Chhatra League’s Tangail district unit.
In 1970, he was elected general secretary of the Salimullah Muslim Hall Students’ Union at the Dhaka University. He became acquainted to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and other national leaders at the time.
He was the chief of the civil unit of Kaderia Bahini led by Abdul Kader Siddiqui during the 1971 Liberation War.
Shaheed edited Mukti Bahini’s weekly mouthpiece ‘Ronangon’ under the pen name ‘Ranodut’.
After the war, he was made an assistant director of the national militia force, formed with the members of the East Pakistan Rifles and Mukti Bahini. Later, he was appointed assistant director of the Jatiya Rakkhi Bahini.
When the Rakkhi Bahini was dissolved, he returned to the army. The government deployed him at the foreign ministry in 1978 after his retirement following promotion to colonel.
He had worked at the Bangladesh embassy in Jakarta as the first secretary, and then at the missions in Kuala Lumpur, Brunei and Hong Kong. Finally, he worked as the ambassador to Bahrain and Spain with the rank of a secretary before retiring in 2006.
He has built a Liberation War museum at his home in Tangail.
