Bangladesh, 1981 — military coup attempt
Event Summary
Zia, a hero of the 1971 liberation war who had ruled since 1977 and survived numerous earlier plots, had traveled to Chittagong to mediate a dispute within his Bangladesh Nationalist Party and was staying, lightly guarded, at the Circuit House. In the pre-dawn hours a group of officers, associated with Major General Abul Manzur, the local army commander embittered over a planned transfer, stormed the residence and shot Zia and several of his guards dead in an attack lasting under twenty minutes. But the coup failed to take hold: the army chief General Ershad and officers across the rest of the country rallied to the constitutional government in Dhaka, where Vice President Abdus Sattar was sworn in as acting president.
Manzur fled and was killed days later, and twelve officers were subsequently tried and executed for the assassination.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Datasets agree. At least two of the three reference datasets we check against carry this event, and none of them disagrees about its date or its result.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
77105301981- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-771-1981-05-30
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: President Ziaur Rahman was assassinated in the Chittagong attack, but the coup failed and the government held under Ershad.
Baseline coding: Coup attempt failed to remove the incumbent. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; killed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CSP
Wikipedia
New York Times
The Evening Independent (via Google News)
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →