Dhaka: Bangladesh police have arrested an influential former Army general who played a major role in the 2007 political transition that brought an Army-backed interim government to power, officials said on Tuesday.
Retd Lt Gen. Masud Uddin Chowdhury was picked up late on Monday night by detective branch officers in plain clothes from his residence in the Baridhara area of capital city Dhaka.
“The detective branch arrested him (Chowdhury) last night from his Baridhara residence. He has been arrested in relation to five cases lodged against him,” detective branch chief Shafiqul Islam told reporters.
Chowdhury was produced before a Dhaka court on Tuesday, and placed on a five-day remand.
Authorities did not disclose details of the charges or the nature of the cases.
Chowdhury is widely regarded to have played a key role in 2007 when the military intervened amid a political crisis, resulting in an Army-backed interim administration taking charge. The caretaker government, which ruled under a state of emergency, remained in office for nearly two years before elections were eventually held in late 2008.
At the time, the arrangement was widely believed to be aimed at sidelining the country’s two dominant political leaders, Sheikh Hasina of Awami League and Khaleda Zia of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Many believe the move was meant to remove both leaders from active politics, thereby paving the way for new leadership in the two major parties.
During that period, current Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, then a senior BNP leader and heir-apparent to Khaleda, was also arrested and faced a string of corruption and other charges under the military-backed dispensation. He left Bangladesh in 2008, and spent 17 years in exile in the UK, before returning to Dhaka in December 2025 and becoming PM after BNP’s win in the February general election.
Lt Gen. Chowdhury held several prominent positions after the end of the interim regime. He served as Bangladesh’s ambassador to Australia and was elected to parliament as a member of the Jatiya Party, which had aligned with Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League in the 2008 elections.
He also played a central role in the anti-corruption drive under the interim government as coordinator of the National Coordination Committee on Serious Crimes, which oversaw high-profile graft investigations targeting political figures and businessmen.
Last year, a court ordered the confiscation of Chowdhury’s movable assets over alleged irregularities linked to the tenure of the interim administration headed by Muhammad Yunus.
