Abul Khair (Bengali intellectual)

Abul Khair (1929 – 14 December 1971) was a Bengali educationist.^[1]

Education and career

Khair joined the department of history of the University of Dhaka in 1955 as a lecturer. He did his Ph.D. on foreign policy in the United States as regards to Indian subcontinent from 1937 - 1947. An enthusiastic supporter of the independence movement of Bangladesh. He was an activist inside the university organizing movement of autonomy of university and non-cooperation movement. He was one of our gallant fighters. ^[1]

Death

Khair was picked up by the Pakistani army sometime in August 1971 together with other few of the Dhaka University teachers. But that time luckily he was released after a month. He stayed back in his university flat from where he was picked up by the Al Badrs on 10 December never to return. He was brutally killed.^[1]

Khair's mutilated body was found gagged and blindfolded with the bedsheet 21 days later at an abandoned brick kiln at Rayer Bazar. It was his wife Sayeda's chador that led to his identity being established. On the same site at Rayer Bazar lay bodies of dozens of other intellectuals brutally slain in the same way.^[2]

On 3 November 2013, Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin, a Muslim leader based in London, and Ashrafuz Zaman Khan, based in the US, were sentenced in absentia after the court found that they were involved in the abduction and murders of 18 people – nine Dhaka University teachers including Dr. Khair, six journalists and three physicians – in December 1971.^[3]

See also

• 1971 Bangladesh atrocities

References