Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding president of Bangladesh, and most of his family members were killed 51 years ago on this day when a group of disgruntled Bangladesh Army officers overthrew his government.
Sheikh Mujib’s two daughters, Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana, who were abroad at the time, survived the bloody political changeover.
The Awami League, whenever it was in power since 1996, used to observe the day as ‘National Mourning Day’, while most others marked it with political indifference.
After the ouster of Sheikh Hasina’s authoritarian regime on August 5, 2024, following a mass uprising in July-August that year, the interim government suspended the political activities of the Awami League and its affiliated organisations in May 2025 until the completion of trials of the party and its leaders accused of responsibility for mass killings during the uprising.
There is no sign yet of any political quarter observing the day this year, as was the case past year.
The interim government dropped the words ‘Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’ from the Jatiya Muktijoddha Council (JAMUKA) Act, that deals with freedom fighters in the country.
The current government passed ‘The Jatiya Muktijoddha Council (Amendment) Act, 2026’ in parliament recently also dropped it following the Jatiya Muktijoddha Council (Amendment) Ordinance of 2025 promulgated by interim government.
In February 2025, a group of agitated mob stormed ‘Bangabandhu Memorial Museum building’ at Dhanmondi in Dhaka city and rampaged through the property already wrecked by mass protesters on August 5, 2024 immediately after the ouster of Sheikh Hasina.
The interim government, whose tenure ended in February, also scrapped the August 15 ‘public holiday’, which had been observed during the Awami League regime.
Sheikh Mujib, who emerged as a key Bengali politician during the Pakistani era and became president of the Awami League, emerged as the leader of the majority party in Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly after the country’s first general elections in late 1970.
However, when the West-based Pakistani ruling class refused to honour the popular electoral verdict and its army began one of the most heinous genocides in human history in the East on March 25, 1971, Sheikh Mujib accepted his arrest and was detained in a Pakistani prison.
The rest of the AL leaders crossed over to neighbouring India and formed a government-in-exile, with the detained Sheikh Mujib at its head, and politically led the war of independence, which was participated by all political parties and groups except a few, including Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami.
Bangladesh emerged independent on December 16 the same year and Sheikh Mujib returned to the independent Bangladesh on January 10, 1972, and took over power.
He, however, switched to one-party rule in 1975 and shut down all daily newspapers except four, which were controlled by the government.
The one-party rule and the repressive regime that came with it made both Sheikh Mujib and his party extremely unpopular. Under the circumstances, his assassination that same year went largely unprotested.
Then, AL leader and one of Sheikh Mujib’s close associates, Khandaker Mushtaque Ahmed, installed a new AL government that promulgated an ordinance indemnifying those involved in Sheikh Mujib’s murder, which was later ratified by parliament during Ziaur Rahman’s government in 1979.
The Awami League led by Sheikh Hasina returned to power in 1996 and scrapped the indemnity ordinance to try those engaged in the assassination.
Through trials, the Awami League punished almost all the accused in the Sheikh Mujib murder case.