Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia Dies at 80 After Prolonged Illness

Bangladesh’s former prime minister and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia died early Tuesday after a prolonged illness, her party said. She was 80.

Zia passed away at 6 am at Evercare Hospital in Dhaka, where she had been undergoing treatment for more than a month. “The BNP chairperson and former prime minister, the national leader Begum Khaleda Zia, passed away today at 6:00 am, just after the Fajr prayer,” the party said in a statement, appealing to supporters to pray for her soul.

She had been admitted to the hospital on November 23 with infections affecting her heart and lungs and was later diagnosed with pneumonia, according to The Daily Star. Over the years, Zia battled multiple health complications, including liver cirrhosis, diabetes, arthritis, and chronic ailments of the kidneys, lungs, heart and eyes. Her treatment involved specialists from Bangladesh as well as the UK, the US, China and Australia. Plans to fly her abroad for advanced care earlier this month were abandoned due to her fragile condition.

Zia is survived by her elder son Tarique Rahman, his wife Zubaida Rahman, and their daughter Zaima Rahman. Rahman returned to Bangladesh on December 25 after 17 years in exile. Her younger son, Arafat Rahman Koko, died in Malaysia several years ago.

A towering figure in Bangladeshi politics

A three-time prime minister, Khaleda Zia formally entered politics in the early 1980s after the assassination of her husband, President Ziaur Rahman, in 1981. Though she had no political background, she stepped in to stabilise the BNP, which her husband had founded. She became the party’s vice-president in January 1984 and its chairperson later that year.

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Born in 1945 in Jalpaiguri in undivided British India, Zia moved to what was then East Bengal after Partition. She studied in Dinajpur and married Ziaur Rahman in 1960, when he was a Pakistan Army officer. During Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War, Ziaur Rahman emerged as a key military figure in the fight for independence.

Khaleda Zia rose to national prominence after joining hands with Sheikh Hasina—daughter of Bangladesh’s founding leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman—to spearhead a mass movement that toppled military ruler Hossain Mohammad Ershad in 1990. Their alliance soon collapsed, however, giving way to a rivalry that would dominate Bangladeshi politics for decades. The two leaders came to be known as the country’s “battling Begums.”

Zia became Bangladesh’s first female prime minister after the BNP won the 1991 parliamentary elections. During her first term, she restored the parliamentary system of government, replaced the presidential model, introduced the caretaker government system to oversee elections, lifted restrictions on foreign investment, and made primary education free and compulsory.

She returned to office briefly in 1996 and again in 2001, when the BNP won a landslide victory. Her second full term, however, was overshadowed by allegations of corruption, political violence and the rise of Islamist militancy. A 2004 grenade attack on an Awami League rally led by Sheikh Hasina killed more than 20 people and injured hundreds, deepening political polarisation.

Although Zia later moved against extremist groups, her government fell in 2006 amid unrest, paving the way for an army-backed interim administration. Both Zia and Hasina were jailed on corruption charges before being released ahead of the 2008 elections.

Zia never returned to power. The BNP boycotted the 2014 and 2024 elections, while her rivalry with Hasina continued to shape the country’s political landscape, often triggering strikes and clashes that disrupted governance and economic growth.

In 2018, Zia and her aides were convicted in a corruption case involving foreign donations to an orphanage trust. She was jailed and later placed under house arrest on humanitarian grounds in 2020 as her health declined. She was freed from house arrest in August 2024, following Hasina’s ouster, and was acquitted in early 2025 by the Supreme Court.

With her death, Bangladesh has lost one of its most influential—and polarising—political figures, whose legacy remains deeply intertwined with the country’s turbulent journey between military rule and democracy.