Bangladesh News

Chittagong City Corporation (CCC) Mayor ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury along with his wife and son left for Bangkok where his daughter died of cancer yesterday.

The CCC mayor left the country after receiving the Government Order (GO) on Thursday, a week after he was released on bail on October 8.

The GO allowed him to see his daughter Fauzia Sultana Tumpa and receive medical treatment abroad.

The doctors at Piyathai Hospital in Bangkok declared Tumpa dead withdrawing the life-support ventilator at 3:30pm yesterday, 21 days after she was placed on life-support ventilation, sources said.

Tumpa, a 3rd year student of English at Premier University in Chittagong, had been receiving treatment for non-Hodgkin Lymphoma since the first week of June this year.

Mohiuddin received the news of his daughter’s death while boarding a Bangkok-bound flight of Thai Airways along with his wife Hasina Mohiuddin and son barrister Mohibul Hasan Noupel at the Chittagong airport.

He told the journalists on Thursday that the government order allowed him to travel to Bangkok and Singapore but did not permit him to perform hajj.

The CCC mayor said he did not harm anybody and has always tried to work for people.

“I used to talk about the Chittagong port for its improvement. I have always wanted to work for Chittagong and its people who had been victims to deprivation and harassment,” Mohiuddin told The Daily Star at his Chashma Hill residence in the city’s Sholoshahar area on Thursday afternoon.

Replying to a query, the mayor said he was yet to receive any reply following his appeal to the LGRD ministry for an explanation about the restriction on his working as the CCC mayor.

“I want to leave behind a centre-based system that would allow the leaders to carry on party activities smoothly,” he said.

When asked to name some leaders who might be given the responsibility to lead the party in the port city in his absence, Mohiuddin referred to Dr Afserul Amin, advocate Ibrahim Hossain Babul, AL city unit General Secretary Enamul Haq Danu and Khorshed Alam Sujan.

Earlier, Mohiuddin held a meeting with CCC councillors and officials.

He asked them to strengthen the corporation’s existing income generation projects to overcome the revenue shortfall, which reportedly stood at Tk 30 crore.