He was the eldest son of Jahanara Imam, who wrote about Rumi's experiences and daily life in her memoir about the war, Ekattorer Dingulee.

After his training, he came to Dhaka to join the Crack Platoon, a group that conducted major guerrilla operations against the Pakistan Army.

[5] Rumi participated in hit and run attacks, including the shooting of police guards outside a house Dhanmondi Road 18 that led to his capture, detention and demise.

[6] In the Dhanmondi operation, Rumi and his friends carried out a successful assault on the Pakistanis, shooting and killing soldiers from the back window of a black Morris Oxford and then giving the pursuers the slip.

There they were accompanied by many other victims of that night including artist Altaf Mahmud, Abul Barak and Rumi's colleague Azad, Jewel and others.

[8] In that room, Rumi explained to his brother Jami, that army already are fully aware of his operations and he and his colleague Bodi took the full responsibly of the attacks.

[7] Sharif, exhausted from tiredness and injured from severe torture, drove his car to his Elephant Road residence.

Rumi with others of his co-fighters Bodi, Jewel and others, were later never found, assumably became one of the hundreds of thousands of people massacred by the military junta.

Later, though the Sector 2 commander Maj. Khaled Mosharraf had to largely curtail his Dhaka supplies because of intensifying frontier conflicts, by the end of September, the capital again started being shaken by frequent guerrilla attacks on military units and bombing on key locations, and this time it continued almost up to the Pakistani surrender in December later that year.

Sharif Imam underwent a massive heart-attack on 13 December 1971, was rushed to IPGMR (popularly known as PG hospital), where he died at late night because the defibrillator couldn't be used due to a blackout being carried out as an official Indo-Pak war had started a week ago.

[11] On 18 July 2013, Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed was found guilty and received life sentence on the charge related to the killing of Rumi along with Badi, Jewel, Azad and Altaf Mahmud at the army camp set up in Nakhalpara, Dhaka, during the Liberation War.

[12] In 2022, Rumi was portrayed as one of the main characters in Jo Bichar Gaye, a period drama series about the Bangladesh Liberation War.