Barrister Abdul Muntaquim Chaudhury, a prominent Bangladeshi politician, diplomat, and organizer of the 1971 Liberation War, has died in Melbourne, Australia, at the age of 97.
Mr Chaudhury passed away on Friday, 9 October 2026.
A central figure in the political and legal history of modern Bangladesh, he served as one of the key drafters of the nation’s post-independence constitution and led early diplomatic missions across Asia and Europe.
Born on 2 September 1929, Abu Taher Abdul Muntaquim Chaudhury was the youngest child of Khan Bahadur Tazzammul Ali Chaudhury, descending from the prominent Kanihati Chaudhury family of Sylhet.
He pursued his higher education across several historic institutions in the region, completing his Intermediate in Arts (I.A.) at Aligarh Muslim University before undertaking further studies at Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan and St Xavier’s College. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Calcutta and was later called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn in London.
Mr Chaudhury entered active politics in the 1960s, serving as a member of the Pakistan National Assembly. He secured re-election to the assembly in the historic 1970 general election, a major catalyst that paved the way for Bangladesh’s independence movement.
During the 1971 Liberation War, he actively served as an organizer for the independence movement. Following independence, he became a member of the Constituent Assembly of Bangladesh, where he played an instrumental role on the committee drafting the nation’s founding constitution.
In 1973, Mr Chaudhury joined the diplomatic corps as Bangladesh’s Ambassador to Japan. He later went on to represent the country as Ambassador to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
Upon concluding his diplomatic tenure, he returned to Bangladesh in 1979 and shifted his focus toward human rights and legal reform. He became the founding Executive Director of the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST), which grew to become one of the country’s foremost legal rights organizations.
