India, Jan. 4 -- Begum Khaleda Zia, Bangladesh's first woman Prime Minister, breathed her last on December 26, 2025. Known for her often complex and sometimes tense relationship with India, she was born on August 15, 1946, to Taiyaba and Iskandar Ali Majumdar in Dinajpur district in undivided India. Her father ran a business in Jalpaiguri, which was a part of the Bengal Province of British India. Her family moved to East Pakistan only in the 1950s.

It was in 2015 that Begum Zia had her last notable interaction with the Indian leadership. That was when she had come down to the Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel in Dhaka to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A meeting that had raised multiple eyebrows even before it happened, with the then Bangla...