Tarique Rahman, acting chairman of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), is to visit his father’s grave, BNP founder and former president Ziaur Rahman, on Friday, a day after returning to Bangladesh after nearly 17 years in exile.
Tarique Rahman left his Gulshan apartment in Dhaka at roughly 2:54pm on a bus painted with red and green—Bangladesh’s national colours—and headed to Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, where his father is buried.
He is due to lay a wreath at the cemetery alongside senior BNP officials, including Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and members of the party’s Standing Committee.
Tarique Rahman is paying tribute at his father’s grave for the first time in nearly 19 years. His last visit was on September 1, 2006, while he was working as the BNP’s senior joint secretary general on the party’s founding anniversary.
Tarique Rahman plans to pay tribute to the heroes of Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War at the National Martyrs’ Memorial in Savar later today, Friday.
On Saturday, he is likely to be properly registered to vote. Following registration, he would visit Osman Hadi’s grave at the Dhaka University Central Mosque.
Tarique Rahman will also visit the National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation (NITOR), popularly known as Pangu Hospital, to meet with victims who were injured during the July 2024 rebellion.
Tarique Rahman returned to Bangladesh on Thursday morning, arriving at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport with his wife, Zubaida Rahman, and daughter, Zaima Rahman, after nearly 17 years away. Their aircraft had entered Bangladeshi airspace earlier in the day.
He used the same bus as on Friday to get from the airport to Evercare Hospital, a public reception location, and then to his Gulshan house.
His return has drawn enormous public attention and intense emotional reactions from BNP leaders, activists, and sympathisers around the country. Hundreds of thousands of supporters gathered to greet him, with the BNP portraying his return as a historic and important event for the party and Bangladesh’s opposition politics.
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