Chicago – December 30, 2025
Former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, whose archrivalry with another former premier defined the country’s politics for a generation, has died, her Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) said in a statement Tuesday. She was 80.
Zia was the first woman elected prime minister of Bangladesh.
She had faced corruption cases she said were politically motivated, but in January 2025, the Supreme Court acquitted Zia in the last corruption case against her, which would have let her run in February’s general election.
The BNP said that after she was released from prison due to illness in 2020, her family requested the administration of her archrival, former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, at least 18 times to allow her to be treated abroad, but the requests were rejected.
Following Hasina’s ouster in 2024, an interim government headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus finally allowed her to go. She went to London in January and returned to Bangladesh in May.
