Veteran politician and businessman Reza Ali is no more. He died at Mount Elizabeth Hospitals in Singapore on Monday at local time 11.00am. He was 82.
His family said that he had been ill for a while. His first namaz-e-janaza will be held at Masjid Al-Falah at Singapore’s Bideford Road after Zuhr prayers on Tuesday.
Once Reza Ali’s body arrives in Dhaka, his second namaz-e-janaza will be held at Gulshan Azad Mosque after Zuhr prayers on Wednesday. On the same day his third namaz-e-janaza will be held at the central mosque of Bashundhara residential area following Asr prayers.
Reza Ali’s fourth namaz-e-janaza will be held at the Nazrul Academy in Mymensingh’s Trishal on Thursday after the Zuhr prayers. He will be buried in his family graveyard on the same day after the fifth namaz-e-janaza at the end of Asr prayers in Trishal’s Dhanikhola.
As a student, Reza Ali has studied political science at Dhaka University. He was arrested during the student movement of 1962 and remained behind bars for quite a few years.
He became the assistant general secretary of the then East Pakistan Student Union central committee, formed through provincial conference in 1963. From the beginning of the sixties, he had become involved with the student and mass movement throughout the country.
Towards 1968 Reza Ali decided to establish Bitopi. He took an initiative of establishing Bitopi as an advertising company in 1969. He also engaged in the garments industries in the '80s.
In the '70s, Reza Ali had been involved with politics in some way or another. He joined Awami League politics later. His ancestral home is in Cumilla’s Kasba. His father Tofazzal Ali Khan had become a parliament member first and later a minister from there.
Reza Ali built a large fishery in Dhanikhola of Mymensigh’s Trishal. He became involved in various social and political activities there. As the Awami League candidate, he became a parliament member from Mymensingh-7 constituency in the 2008 elections.