Saeeda Kamal (Tulu)

Saeeda Kamal died at a private hospital in Dhaka at around 7:15 to 7:30 in the morning on Sunday 18 October 2026, aged 74. Her sister Sultana Kamal said she had long been suffering from age-related health problems, including pneumonia and kidney complications. She was admitted to hospital on Saturday 17 October, treated in the intensive care unit and placed on life support that night, but did not recover.

Her body was kept at the mortuary of BIRDEM General Hospital. Sultana Kamal told bdnews24.com that funeral prayers and burial at Azimpur Graveyard in Dhaka would take place on Tuesday, after her only daughter returned from London. Her death was reported by Prothom Alo, The Daily Star, bdnews24.com, The Financial Express, Jugantor and other outlets, and came a little over three months after the death of her brother Shahed Kamal on 4 July 2026.

Saeeda Kamal, nicknamed Tulu, was the youngest daughter of the poet, feminist and cultural leader Sufia Kamal and her second husband, Kamaluddin Ahmed, whom Sufia married in 1939. Sufia Kamal became one of the central figures of Bengali literary and civic life in Dhaka.

Her siblings included Sultana Kamal, a lawyer and human rights activist who later served as an adviser to a caretaker government and chaired the platform Amrai Pari, and three brothers: Shahed Kamal, a journalist and teacher at the University of Dhaka, Shoeb Kamal, who went missing in 1971, and Sajed Kamal. Her elder half-sister Amena Kahhar (1926 to 2014) was the daughter of Sufia Kamal's first marriage.

During the 1971 Liberation War, Saeeda Kamal and her elder sister Sultana went to Tripura in India and worked as nurses with the medical team of Captain Akhtar Ahmed, an army physician of the 4th East Bengal Regiment. Wikipedia's account of the hospital lists both sisters among the small group, with Dr Sitara Begum and others, who set up a tented hospital at Daroga Bagicha near the Sector 2 headquarters at Melaghar. With equipment raised by the London-based physicians Zafrullah Chowdhury and M A Mobin and a grant from the Provisional Government of Bangladesh, the project became the 200-bed Bangladesh Field Hospital at Bishramganj, which began operating on 26 August 1971 and treated wounded freedom fighters until the end of the war. In recognition of her service she was awarded the Commander-in-Chief's Special Commendation.

After independence she completed higher studies at the Faculty of Fine Art of the University of Dhaka and received specialised training in design at Kala Bhavana, Visva-Bharati University, in Santiniketan, India. Her works were featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Bangladesh and abroad, and she was described at her death as an artist who made significant contributions to the development of fine arts in Bangladesh.

Saeeda Kamal had one daughter, who lives in London in the United Kingdom. Little else about her private life has been made public. She remained close to her sister Sultana Kamal, who announced her death and spoke to the press about her illness and funeral arrangements.

Saeeda Kamal belonged to the generation of young women who served the independence struggle as nurses and carers, and her name is recorded among the founding staff of the Bangladesh Field Hospital, the frontline hospital whose wartime work later inspired the Gonoshasthaya Kendra public health movement led by Zafrullah Chowdhury. As an artist trained in Dhaka and Santiniketan, she exhibited for decades at home and abroad, working largely outside the public spotlight that surrounded her mother and sister.