Zahir Raihan

Mohammad Zahirullah (19 August 1935 – disappeared 30 January 1972), known as Zahir Raihan, was a Bangladeshi novelist, writer and filmmaker.

[2][3] Mohammad Zahirullah was born on 19 August 1935 in the village of Majupur in Sonagazi, Feni subdivision, then a part of the Bengal Presidency's Noakhali district.

Raihan had enrolled at the former institution's Anglo-Persian Department but his studies were interrupted due to the Partition of Bengal in 1947, and so he, along with his parents, returned to his village from Calcutta.

The effect of the Bengali Language Movement was so strong on him that he used it as the premise of his landmark film Jibon Theke Neya.

He abandoned the project and made his most notable work, the documentary “Stop Genocide," depicting the horrendous atrocities of the Pakistani forces.

Critic Ziaul Haq Swapan calls it the start of the history of Bangladeshi documentaries and describes it as "a vehement protest against the Pakistan army’s pogrom in Bangladesh".

Raihan went missing on 30 January 1972, when he was trying to locate his brother, notable writer Shahidullah Kaiser, who was captured and presumably killed by the Pakistan army and/or local collaborators during the final days of the liberation war.