The High Court has ordered the exhumation and DNA testing of the body buried under the name “Mahmudur Rahman” at a graveyard in Savar to confirm the identity of Harris Chowdhury, BNP chief Khaleda Zia’s former political affairs secretary.
The High Court bench comprising Justice AKM Asaduzzaman and Justice Muhammad Mahbub Ul Islam issued the order, along with a rule, after hearing a writ petition filed by Harris Chowdhury's daughter, Barrister Samira Tanjin, on Thursday.
The rule asks why the authorities should not be directed to exhume the body buried under the name “Mahmudur Rahman” at the Jamia Khatamun Nabiyyin Madrasa Graveyard in Savar for DNA testing to confirm the identity, why a death certificate should not be issued in Harris Chowdhury's name if the DNA test is positive, why the Interpol Red Notice against him should not be withdrawn, and why he should not be buried with due honor as a freedom fighter in his home district according to his last wishes.
The secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs, the director of CID, the superintendent of police of Dhaka, and the officer-in-charge of Savar Model police station have been asked to respond to the rule.
Earlier, in 2021, media reports stated that on September 4 of that year, Abul Harris Chowdhury, the former political secretary to Khaleda Zia and a former BNP leader, was buried under the name “Mahmudur Rahman” in a graveyard in the Jalalabad area of Savar, Dhaka.
Harris Chowdhury's daughter said that the recently deposed authoritarian government and its intelligence agencies created a drama to question her father's death. The media repeatedly said that there is still ambiguity surrounding Harris Chowdhury's death.
"It is heartbreaking and painful as a child to have doubts about my father's death. People still ask if he is really dead, and we are being harassed because of it. So, we turned to the court to put an end to this,” she said.
In 2007, following the declaration of a state of emergency in Bangladesh, Harris Chowdhury and his wife went into hiding, leaving authorities without any information about their whereabouts.
He was accused in the August 21 grenade attack case, leading to an Interpol Red Notice in 2015 and a life imprisonment sentence in 2018.
He was also sentenced to seven years in prison for corruption in the Zia Charitable Trust case and implicated in the Shah AMS Kibria murder case, which is still under trial.
In January 2022, reports of Chowdhury's death surfaced, stating he had died in Dhaka three months earlier. However, the information was not publicly disclosed by his family, and the exact burial location remains unclear.
CID has not confirmed whether Chowdhury is alive or deceased.