Dhaka — Bangladesh’s former parliament speaker, Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury, has been arrested over her alleged involvement in the suppression of the 2024 uprising that ousted former prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
The Detective Branch of police picked up Chaudhury, 59, from the home of her relatives in Dhaka’s Dhanmondi residential area on Tuesday morning, officer Shafiqul Islam said.
The former speaker was then taken to the custody of the Detective Branch at Mintoo Road. Police are examining the charges against her and are likely to produce her before the court later in the day on specific charges.
Chaudhury is the first female speaker of the Jatiya Sangsad (parliament), having been elected on April 30, 2013, after the then speaker Abdul Hamid was elected president of the republic.
She held the position until her resignation in September 2024, nearly a month after Hasina was ousted on August 5, 2024, following the uprising.
Most top leaders of Hasina’s Awami League party went into hiding after an interim administration led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus assumed office on August 8, 2024.
The Awami League leadership and government ministers were accused in numerous cases, and their homes and businesses were vandalized and looted during the initial period of the interim administration tenure.
Chaudhury had been untraceable for a long time after her resignation, as President Mohammed Shahabuddin dissolved parliament soon after the interim administration’s takeover.
She has been accused in several cases related to the violence during the mass uprising, including the death of a goldsmith in the northern district of Rangpur. Chaudhury was a lawmaker of Hasina’s Awami League party from a parliamentary constituency in the district.
Hasina, who is now exiled in India, was tried in absentia and sentenced to death by a special court in Dhaka in November 2025 for the brutal suppression of the uprising, which, according to a UN estimate, left some 1,400 people killed.
Born on October 6, 1966, in Chatkhil of Noakhali, Chaudhury studied at Dhaka’s Holy Cross School and College. She then pursued her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in law from Dhaka University and later earned her PhD in constitutional law and human rights from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom.
She served the Awami League as its International Affairs Secretary and was elected as a member of parliament from one of the seats reserved for women on March 24, 2009. She served as state minister of the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs until her nomination as speaker of the Jatiya Sangsad in April 2013.
Chaudhury was awarded the Asia Society’s Humanitarian Service Award on June 9, 2010, in recognition of her role as a leader in advocating for the elimination of violence against women and mainstreaming women’s empowerment and employment in Bangladesh.
She also served as the chairperson of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association between 2014 and 2017.
