Bangladesh’s First Woman Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia Passes Away at 80

Dhaka/New Delhi: Begum Khaleda Zia, Bangladesh’s first woman prime minister, three-time head of government and chairperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), passed away early Tuesday after a prolonged illness. She was 80.

The veteran leader breathed her last at 6:00 am while undergoing treatment at Evercare Hospital in Dhaka, the BNP confirmed in a statement. “The BNP chairperson and former prime minister, national leader Begum Khaleda Zia, passed away today just after the Fajr prayer,” the party said, urging supporters to pray for her soul.

Khaleda Zia had been hospitalised for the past 36 days after being admitted on November 23 with serious complications affecting her heart and lungs, along with pneumonia, according to Bangladeshi media reports. She had long battled multiple ailments, including liver cirrhosis, diabetes, arthritis, and chronic kidney, cardiac, pulmonary, and eye-related conditions. A team of specialists from Bangladesh, the UK, the US, China and Australia had been overseeing her treatment. Plans to take her abroad for advanced care were dropped earlier this month due to her fragile condition.

Widely regarded as one of the most influential — and polarising — figures in Bangladesh’s political history, Khaleda Zia formally entered politics after winning the 1991 general election, which restored parliamentary democracy following years of military rule. Her victory made her the country’s first female prime minister, a position she went on to hold three times.

Born in 1945 in Jalpaiguri, then in British India, Khaleda Zia moved to East Bengal after Partition. She married Ziaur Rahman, a Pakistan Army officer who later emerged as a key figure in Bangladesh’s Liberation War and went on to found the BNP. After Ziaur Rahman’s assassination in 1981, Khaleda Zia — previously a political outsider — stepped in to steady the party, rising rapidly to become its chairperson in 1984.

She played a crucial role, alongside her future rival Sheikh Hasina, in leading the mass movement that toppled military ruler H M Ershad in 1990. However, their alliance soon gave way to a bitter rivalry that came to define Bangladeshi politics for decades, earning them the moniker “the battling Begums.”

Khaleda Zia returned to power in 1996 and again in 2001, when she secured a landslide victory. Her second full term, however, was overshadowed by allegations of corruption, political violence, and the rise of Islamist militancy. The 2004 grenade attack on a rally addressed by Sheikh Hasina — which killed over 20 people — became one of the darkest chapters of her tenure, though the BNP consistently rejected allegations of state complicity.

Her government fell in 2006, followed by an army-backed interim administration that jailed both Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina on corruption charges. While Hasina later returned to power, Khaleda Zia never regained office. The BNP’s boycott of multiple elections and her prolonged legal battles further marginalised her role in active politics.

In 2018, she was sentenced in a corruption case linked to an orphanage trust and later placed under house arrest on medical grounds. She was released in 2024 following the ouster of Sheikh Hasina. Earlier this year, Bangladesh’s Supreme Court acquitted her and her elder son Tarique Rahman in the corruption case, and Rahman was also cleared in the 2004 grenade attack case.

Khaleda Zia is survived by Tarique Rahman, his wife Zubaida Rahman, and their daughter Zaima Rahman. Her younger son, Arafat Rahman Koko, died in Malaysia several years ago.

With her passing, Bangladesh loses a towering political figure whose life and legacy shaped the nation’s democratic journey — marked equally by resilience, rivalry, and enduring influence.