Toufique Imrose Khalidi

Toufique Imrose Khalidi was a Bangladeshi journalist, editor and media entrepreneur who founded and led bdnews24.com, Bangladesh's pioneering digital news service. He died in London on 2 October 2026 at the age of 59 after a brain haemorrhage that followed a stroke.

Born in Dhaka in June 1967, Khalidi studied English literature at the University of Dhaka, earning both a bachelor's degree with honours and a master's degree. He later served for several years as general secretary of the university's English Literature Alumni Association, staying connected to the department that had shaped his early thinking about language and public life.

His career took him from Dhaka newsrooms to London and back again. He worked as news editor of The Daily Star in Bangladesh and later with the BBC World Service in London. In 2006 he left the BBC to return home and launch bdnews24.com, which became one of the country's leading online news outlets. Under his editorship the site emphasised stories affecting underrepresented communities, including the Prism project that helped young journalists report from their own neighbourhoods. bdnews24.com was the first publication in Asia to partner with The New York Times to jointly edit and publish the annual Turning Points magazine in Bangladesh. Khalidi also wrote for international outlets and, in 2018, spoke at the Bangladesh Rising conference at Harvard University on the role of media in the country's development.

From 2020 he faced a high-profile graft investigation that supporters argued was politically motivated. On 5 September 2024 the case was withdrawn and he was cleared of the charges, a turn that drew wide coverage in Bangladesh and abroad. In October 2025, marking bdnews24.com's nineteenth anniversary, he told colleagues that a news organisation's mission was not to rule but to report, and not to govern but to hold governors to account.

In early October 2026 he travelled to London to visit his son and was expected to stay only a few days. On the night of 1 October he was admitted to a London hospital after a brain haemorrhage. Doctors pronounced him dead at 2:23pm local time on 2 October 2026. He was 59. Colleagues at bdnews24.com and across Bangladeshi journalism mourned a pioneer of the country's digital press.

Khalidi is remembered as the editor-in-chief and owner who built bdnews24.com into a national digital newsroom, as a former Daily Star and BBC journalist who bridged print, broadcast and online, and as a mentor who insisted that independent reporting serve the public rather than power.