- Interim government announces mourning, special prayers nationwide.
- Police launch manhunt, offer reward for suspect’s arrest.
- Muhammad Yunus says the attack is aimed at derailing upcoming polls.
A leader of Bangladesh’s 2024 uprising, who was wounded in an assassination attempt and flown to Singapore for treatment, has died in the city-state, officials said Friday.
Masked assailants shot the 32-year-old spokesman for the student protest group Inqilab Moncho, Sharif Osman Hadi, 32, a week ago as he left a mosque in Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka, wounding him in the ear.
“Despite the best efforts of doctors… Mr Hadi succumbed to his injuries,” Singapore’s foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that it was assisting Bangladeshi authorities in repatriating his body.
Inqilab Moncho first announced Hadi’s death in a Facebook post saying, “In the fight against Indian hegemony, Allah has accepted the great revolutionary Osman Hadi as a martyr.”
Hadi was a candidate in the February 2026 election, the first parliamentary polls since a student-led uprising toppled the autocratic rule of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina last year.
He was taken to Singapore on Monday to be treated.
In Dhaka, the interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus Hadi confirmed the death.
“I express my deepest condolences. His passing is an irreparable loss to the nation,” Yunus said.
“The country’s march towards democracy cannot be stopped through fear, terror or bloodshed,” he said in a televised speech.
The government also announced special prayers at mosques after Friday prayers and half a day of mourning on Saturday.
Hadi was a senior leader of the student protest group Inqilab Mancha and has been an outspoken critic of India – Hasina’s old ally, where the ousted prime minister remains in self-imposed exile.
Manhunt for armed men
Police in Bangladesh have launched a hunt for the attackers who shot Hadi, releasing photographs of two key suspects and offering a reward of five million taka (about $42,000) for information leading to their arrest.
Yunus, the 85-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate who led Bangladesh until February 12 elections, said last Saturday that the shooting was a premeditated attack by a powerful network, without naming him.
He said “the purpose of the conspirators is to derail the election”, adding that the attack was “symbolic – meant to demonstrate their strength and sabotage the entire electoral process.”
Muslim-majority Bangladesh, a nation of 170 million people, will vote directly for 300 lawmakers to its parliament, with another 50 selected on a women’s list.
A referendum on a landmark democratic reform package will be held on the same day.
Tensions are high as the parties prepare for the polls and the country remains volatile.
Hasina, who was convicted in absentia last month and sentenced to death, refused to return to attend her trial. She remains in hiding in India, despite Dhaka’s repeated requests for New Delhi to hand her over.
The last election, held in January 2024, gave Hasina a fourth consecutive term and her Awami League 222 seats, but was dismissed by opposition parties as a sham.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by three-time former prime minister Khaleda Zia, is expected to win the upcoming poll.
Zia is in intensive care in Dhaka and her son and political heir Tarique Rahman is due to return from exile in Britain after 17 years on December 25.
