Former Bangladesh president and chief justice Shahabuddin Ahmed passed away on Saturday morning.
He was 92.
‘He died at the Combined Military Hospital in Dhaka at about 10:20am,’ the former president’s son-in-law Ahaduzzaman Mohammad Ali told New Age.
He was admitted to CMH with old age complications.
Shahabuddin Ahmed was the sixth CJ of Bangladesh.
He was the chief of the caretaker government after the fall of army dictator HM Ershad and was elected president after the Awami League had been voted to power in 1996.
He was born in Pamal village of Kendua in Netrokona on February 1, 1930.
After passing the matriculation and intermediate examinations he took admission into the University of Dhaka in 1948, obtained bachelor’s in economics in 1951 and master’s in international relations in 1952.
He joined the Civil Service of Pakistan in 1954, completed training in the Lahore Civil Service Academy and at the University of Oxford.
He was sub-divisional officer of Gopalganj and Natore. He was additional deputy commissioner of Faridpur.
In 1960, he was transferred to the judicial branch and worked as additional district and session judge of Dhaka and Barisal, and as district and sessions judge of Comilla and Chittagong.
In 1967, he served as a registrar of the High Court of the then East Pakistan in Dhaka. He was elevated to the bench of the High Court on January 29, 1972.
He was appointed a judge of the appellate division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh on February 7, 1980.
Shahabuddin was the chairman of the Commission of Inquiry established under the Commission of Inquiry Act on police firing on the students in mid-February 1983.
He was appointed the Chief Justice of Bangladesh on January 14, 1990.
