Abdul Hai Sikdar, chairman of the state-run Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) and editor of the daily Jugantor, has claimed that during Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s rule a boy was killed for refusing to call Mujib the “Father of the Nation,” after which the severed head was allegedly turned into a football and used by the boy’s father.
Fact-checking outlet FactCheck Zone has described the account as a completely unsupported and fanciful political story. Its research team reported finding no evidence of any such incident in contemporary Bangladeshi newspapers from the post-independence period, historical documents, international human rights reports, or recognized political histories.
The site labeled the claim as imaginary propaganda.
The fact-checkers noted that similar but unrelated cases of heads being severed and used as footballs have occurred in later decades. One widely circulated account involves a 2001 incident in Mirpur in which a local criminal allegedly beheaded a college student on a playing field and played with the head.
Another involved a 1999 killing linked to the Purba Bangla Communist Party, in which a man was murdered over a land dispute, his head was cut off, and it was reportedly used as a football. Neither case occurred during Sheikh Mujib’s era nor had any connection to the title “Father of the Nation.”
The same speech also contained other claims that FactCheck Zone disputed. Sikdar reportedly stated that Bangabandhi Sheikh Mujib gave an interview to Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci on 7 November 1971. However, Mujib was held in solitary confinement in Mianwali jail in Pakistan from 26 March 1971 until 8 January 1972, making an interview in Dhaka or elsewhere on that date impossible.
Fallaci’s well-known interview with Bangabandhu actually took place in February 1972, after he had returned to independent Bangladesh and assumed the office of prime minister.
Sikdar further claimed that 500,000 people died of starvation in Kurigram alone during the 1974 famine.
Census data show that Kurigram’s total population in 1974 was approximately 1.288 million, making a death toll of half a million in that district alone demographically implausible.
Nationwide deaths in Bangladesh in 1974 (from all causes) totaled around 1.31 million, according to demographic statistics, rendering the Kurigram-specific figure inconsistent with available data.
The original remarks were reported by outlets including The Dhaka Diary and others. FactCheck Zone’s assessment concludes that the central “head-as-football” anecdote lacks any documentary or historical basis.