Mahbub Ali Khan (Bengali: মাহবুব আলী খান; 3 November 1934 – 6 August 1984) was a Bangladesh Navy rear admiral and the Chief of Naval Staff from 1979 till his death in 1984. He is known for his heroic actions done for his country. Under him the South Talpattisandbar and other emerging islands in the Bay of Bengal, over which both India and Bangladesh claimed sovereignty, remained under the authority of Bangladesh. He is also known for bringing down the pirates in the Bay of Bengal and was responsible for maintaining the security of the Bay and the Sundarbans.
Early life and family
Khan was born into a wealthy Bengali Muslimzamindar family on 3 November 1934 in Jalalpur, Sylhet District (present-day Bangladesh) located in the British Raj's Assam Province. He was the youngest child among the three children of Ahmed Ali Khan and Jubaida Khatun. Khatun was the daughter of Khan Bahadur Wasiuddin Ahmad. In 1901, Ahmad Ali Khan became the first Muslim barrister in Sylhet. Ahmad Ali Khan was also the President of the Assam Congress and represented the All-India Muslim League party as a member of the Legislative Assembly.
Khan spent most of his childhood in the Sylhet District and the West Bengali city of Kolkata. After the formation of Pakistan, his family moved to Dhaka, the East Bengali city which had now become the new capital of the eastern wing of Pakistan. He received his primary education in Kolkata and Dhaka and pursued for higher studies in Dhaka College. Later he acquired a law degree. Khan's niece is the Harvard-educated Irene Khan, former head of Amnesty International.
In 1952 Khan joined the executive branch of the Pakistan Navy as a cadet. Khan received his training as a cadet in a military school in Quetta of West Pakistan. For higher training he went to finish his graduation at Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, England. After his graduation he married Sayeeda Iqbal Manda Banu in 1955. They had two daughters – Shahina Khan and Zubaida Khan. On 1 May 1956, Khan received his standing commission. In 1960 he became the Gunnery officer of P.N.S (Pakistani Naval Ship) Tughril. In 1963, Queen Elizabeth II awarded him for being a disciplined officer[citation needed]. In 1964 he became the torpedo and anti-submarine officer of P.N.S Tippu Sultan. From 1967 to 1968 he served the Pakistan Navy as the Joint Chiefs’ Secretariat Staff officer in the Defence Ministry in Rawalpindi of West Pakistan. In 1970 he became the officer in charge of the torpedo and anti-submarine school in the P.N.S Himalaya and in the West Pakistani city of Karachi he served as the Seaward defence officer.
During the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, when East Pakistan seceded to become Bangladesh and went to war with West Pakistan for independence, Khan, at that time, was still staying in West Pakistan. Due to being a Bengali, Khan's allegiance was questioned by the Pakistani government, and so Khan and his family were kept under house arrest by the Pakistan authorities. After the war was over with Bangladesh's victory in December 1971, Khan was still kept under house arrest in Pakistan for a further two years until in 1973 he managed to escape from Pakistan to Afghanistan, from there he went to India before finally getting back to his homeland, Bangladesh.
Now in Bangladesh, during the premiership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Khan became the first Bengali to be appointed as the commandant of the Mercantile Academy of Chittagong in October 1973. After Sheikh Mujib resigned as prime minister and took over the presidency for the second time in January 1975, Bangladesh transformed into a one-party presidential republic with the president acting as the head of both the state and government. After President Sheikh Mujib was assassinated by some rogue junior officers of the Bangladesh Army in August 1975, martial law was imposed in the country by Khondaker Mostaq Ahmad, who had been installed as the new president of the country by the junior army officers who carried out President Mujib's assassination. On 3 November 1975, after a military coup forced President Mostaq Ahmed and his Chief of Army Staff, Major General Ziaur Rahman to resign, a counter-coup four days later saw Major General Zia re-instated as the Chief of Army Staff, who then took over the government of the country, already under martial law, as a deputy chief martial law administrator under the new president, Abu Sadat Mohammad Sayem. Zia's regime saw Rear Admiral Khan become the Assistant Chief of Naval Staff (Operations and Personnel) of the Bangladesh Navy in February 1976. In December 1976 the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom sold a Salisbury class frigate to Bangladesh which came to be known as BNS (Bangladeshi Naval Ship) Umar Farooq. The ship arrived in Bangladesh on 27 March 1977. Khan became the captain of the BNS Umar Farooq and with this ship he travelled to the ports of Algeria, Yugoslavia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka. After Major General Zia became President in April 1977, Khan became the Chief of Naval Staff of the Bangladesh Navy on 4 November 1979. Later, he was elevated to the rank of rear admiral on 1 January 1980 .
As the naval chief, Rear Admiral Khan worked hard to modernise the Bangladesh Navy. In the aftermath of the Bhola cyclone in 1970, a small uninhabited offshore sandbar landform called the South Talpattisandbar emerged in the Bay of Bengal. Although South Talpatti was uninhabited and there were no permanent settlement or station located in the sandbar, both India and Bangladesh claimed sovereignty over it because of speculation over the existence of oil and natural gas in the region. Under Khan, the sandbar remained under Bangladeshi authority. The Bangladesh Navy, under Khan, was also able to bring down many pirates that were operating in the Bay of Bengal. Khan also took possible measures to maintain the security of the Sundarbans.
During the presidency of Ziaur Rahman, besides being the head of the navy, Khan also served as the minister of telecommunications. Khan was also a member of President Zia's temporarily formed political party called JaGoDal. After reintroducing multi-party democratic system in the country, President Zia retired from the army and stepped down as the Chief of Army Staff in April 1978 with the rank of lieutenant general. In September 1978, President Zia founded a new political party known as the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). After winning the 1979 general election and democratically legitimizing his position as president, Zia lifted the martial law that had been in effect in the country since 1975. However, after President Zia was assassinated by some members of the army in a failed coup d'état in May 1981, martial law was again imposed a year later after Zia's Chief of Army Staff, General Hussain Mohammad Ershad took over the government as chief martial law administrator by overthrowing the civilian government of Zia's vice-president and successor, President Abdus Sattar in a bloodless coup on 24 March 1982. As the chief martial law administrator, General Ershad installed a retired judge named A. F. M. Ahsanuddin Chowdhury as the new president of the country on 27 March 1982. Under this new regime, Rear Admiral Khan was appointed as a deputy chief martial law administrator.[2] At that time, he also became an adviser in the Ministry of Communications; Khan was later made a minister of that ministry on 10 July 1982. Even after General Ershad took over the presidency in December 1983, Rear Admiral Khan continued to serve in this ministerial role in the Ministry of Communications till 1 June 1984.[3] During Ershad's presidency, the Chief of Naval Staff also served as the Minister of Agriculture till his death.
Mahbub Ali Khan had a heart attack in the then Dhaka International Airport, while investigating an air crash in the airport area.
On 6 August 1984, Khan went to the then Dhaka International Airport in Dhaka to investigate an air crash in that area. There, while investigating the air crash, Khan had a heart attack and he was taken to the Combined Military Hospital (CMH), where he died at the age of 49. His burial place is at the Banani defence graveyard in Dhaka.[7]
Pakistan (before 1971)
Bangladesh
Pakistan Navy
Bangladesh Navy
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