Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's rise seemed destined to end in triumph. In the 1970 Pakistani general election, his Awami League won 167 of 169 East Pakistani seats in the National Assembly -- a mandate so overwhelming that West Pakistan's military government refused to honor it. The resulting crisis sparked the 1971 Liberation War, during which Mujib was arrested and imprisoned in Pakistan while a provisional government fought in his name. When Pakistani forces surrendered on 16 December 1971, Mujib returned to a hero's welcome and led the new nation as prime minister. But the euphoria of independence collided with staggering reality. Famine struck in 1974. The economy buckled under wartime destruction and corruption. Mujib responded by consolidating power -- banning opposition parties, creating a one-party state, and establishing the Jatiya Rakkhi Bahini, a 30,000-strong paramilitary force loyal to him personally. The military, whose budget was slashed to 13 percent of national spending, watched with growing resentment.

The plotters were mid-ranking army officers, mostly majors and lieutenant colonels, nursing grievances both personal and ideological. Some resented the Rakkhi Bahini's privileges. Others were angered by what they saw as Indian influence over Bangladesh's affairs -- a sensitive charge in a country born from the wreckage of the Indo-Pakistani War. Factional divisions within the army itself deepened the instability: rivalry between officers who had fought in the Liberation War and those who had been repatriated from Pakistan created competing loyalties that Mujib never managed to reconcile. The conspirators moved with coordinated speed. Separate teams targeted Mujib's residence, the homes of his close associates, and key government installations. Sheikh Kamal, Mujib's eldest son, was killed first. When Mujib came downstairs demanding to know what was happening, he too was shot on the staircase of his own home. His youngest son, Russel, reportedly pleaded to be taken to his mother before he was killed.

Khondaker Mostaq Ahmad, Mujib's own commerce minister, proclaimed himself president before the blood had dried. Radio Bangladesh broadcast the news of the coup by mid-morning, and Mostaq's government was recognized by several nations within days. Only two of Mujib's children survived: Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana, who were traveling in West Germany at the time. They would spend the next six years in exile, barred from returning to Bangladesh. The assassins faced no immediate consequences. An Indemnity Ordinance, passed on 26 September 1975, shielded the killers from prosecution -- a legal shield that would remain in place for over two decades. Some of the coup participants were rewarded with diplomatic postings abroad. The message was unmistakable: the new order had no intention of treating the killings as a crime.

When Sheikh Hasina returned to Bangladesh in 1981 and eventually won the prime ministership in 1996, one of her first acts was to repeal the Indemnity Ordinance. The trial of the assassins, which had been legally impossible for 21 years, finally began. It would take another fourteen years to reach its conclusion. In 2010, five of the convicted killers were executed by hanging at Dhaka Central Jail. Others had fled abroad and remained fugitives. The trial was both a legal proceeding and a national reckoning -- supporters called it overdue justice for the founding father; critics questioned whether the daughter of the victim could oversee an impartial process. Whatever the verdict on the verdict, the delay itself tells a story about Bangladesh's tortured relationship with its own founding: a liberation struggle celebrated with near-religious reverence, followed by a political assassination that successive governments either glorified or ignored depending on who held power.

Dhanmondi 32 became the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum in 1994, preserving the house where Mujib lived and died -- the staircase where he fell, the rooms where his family was killed. Under the Awami League governments, 15 August was observed as National Mourning Day. After the fall of Sheikh Hasina's government in August 2024, the museum was attacked and set ablaze by protesters, and in February 2025 it was largely demolished. The destruction of the physical site has not erased the political fault line it represents. In Dhaka, the assassination of 1975 is never simply history. It is the origin point of every argument about democracy, military rule, dynastic politics, and the unfinished question of what Bangladesh's independence was supposed to mean. The bullet holes may be gone, but the wounds they represent are not.