Obaidul Quader, former General Secretary of the Awami League, has publicly described for the first time how he narrowly escaped death on August 5, 2024, during the fall of the Awami League government amid the July Uprising.
In an interview with Indian news outlet The Wall News, Quader said that on the day protesters stormed into Dhaka’s Parliament area, he and his wife took refuge in a nearby house.
As demonstrators began ransacking the building, the couple locked themselves in a bathroom and remained there for nearly five hours.
“They even began looting the bathroom—ripping out the sink and commode,” he said. His wife tried to defuse the situation by telling intruders he was severely ill.
When the group broke in, Quader expected to be handed over to the military or lynched by the mob. Instead, the mood shifted unexpectedly. Some of the protesters recognized him, and began taking selfies. Though tensions remained, some in the group decided to help him escape.
Disguised in a protester’s shirt with a red-flag badge and a face mask, Quader was walked out of the area by several young men posing as relatives. They stopped an autorickshaw and convinced checkpoint guards they were taking sick family members to the hospital. “That’s how we made it out,” he said.
Quader remained in Bangladesh for three months, attempting to regroup. But as mass arrests of party leaders followed, and as he became a prime suspect in over 200 murder cases, he decided to flee the country. With help from unnamed individuals, he eventually crossed into India.
Reflecting on the experience, Quader described the escape as miraculous. “I was not supposed to survive that day. They could’ve killed me right there.”
