The killing of Sharif Osman Hadi
Youth leader Sharif Osman Hadi, spokesperson for Inqilab Mancha and a figure of the 2024 uprising, was shot in the head in Dhaka on 12 December 2025 and died in Singapore six days later. Protests followed across Bangladesh.
Sharif Osman Hadi was shot in the head in Dhaka on 12 December 2025 and died six days later at Singapore General Hospital. He was 32.
Who he was
Hadi was a prominent leader of the student-led uprising that drove Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina from power in 2024. He served as spokesperson for Inqilab Mancha, the Platform for Revolution, and was preparing to contest the Dhaka-8 seat, covering the Bijoynagar area of the capital, in the elections expected in February 2026.
He was an outspoken critic of Indian influence on Bangladeshi politics. Hasina fled to India after the 2024 uprising.
The attack
On 12 December 2025, two assailants on a motorcycle pulled alongside the battery-powered auto-rickshaw Hadi was travelling in and shot him in the head. He was rushed to Dhaka Medical College Hospital, where doctors found damage to his brain stem. On 15 December he was transferred to the neurosurgical intensive care unit at Singapore General Hospital.
His death
Hadi died on Thursday 18 December 2025. Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that despite the best efforts of the doctors, he had succumbed to his injuries.
Inqilab Mancha announced his death on Facebook, writing that in the struggle against Indian hegemony, Allah had accepted the great revolutionary Osman Hadi as a martyr.
What followed
Violent protests erupted in cities across Bangladesh. Mourners assembled at Shahbag in central Dhaka to await his body, and protesters blocked Shahbag Square demanding justice for his killing. At his family's request the body was taken to the Dhaka University Central Mosque the following day rather than immediately on arrival.
Why this record exists
An archive of cultural suppression documents not only what was destroyed, but how it is described afterwards. How a death is narrated decides how it is remembered, and Hadi's is contested ground: his own movement framed it as martyrdom in a struggle against foreign domination, and that framing is now part of what is disputed.
This record is deliberately open. The archive will publish documented evidence about how his killing was reported, by which outlets, and with what omissions. Claims of that kind are published here only with sources attached. That standard is not a formality. It is the reason a record in this archive is hard to dismiss, and it applies to every entry without exception.