Bangladesh Leader Assassinated: Military Coup Shatters Nation

A military coup assassinated Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh's founding father, along with nearly his entire family in a predawn raid on his Dhaka residence on August 15, 1975. Soldiers from the Bengal Lancers arrived at Rahman's house at 5:30 in the morning and opened fire. Rahman, his wife, three sons, two daughters-in-law, and several other family members were killed. His two daughters, Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana, survived only because they were abroad at the time, visiting West Germany. Rahman had led the independence movement that separated Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971, enduring nine months of imprisonment in a Pakistani jail while three million Bengalis died in the war and genocide that accompanied the separation. He became the first president of the new nation and then its prime minister, but his government struggled with famine, corruption, and opposition from both leftist insurgents and right-wing military factions. In January 1975 he established one-party rule under the Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League, a move that alienated many of his former supporters. The coup plotters were mid-ranking army officers who acted with tacit support from elements within the military establishment. The killings extinguished Bangladesh's first democratically elected government and plunged the country into fifteen years of military rule. Sheikh Hasina, who later returned from exile, eventually became prime minister and served multiple terms, making the Rahman family the dominant political dynasty in Bangladeshi history.