Amanullah Asaduzzaman

In 1970, on the first Asad Day, people constructed a monument, Unsatturer Gono-aubyuthaner Swarak O Aumor Asad, at the point in front of the central gate of Dhaka Medical College Hospital where Asad was shot dead. The local people of Shibpur and Dhanua established Shibpur Shaheed Asad College in 1970. In 1991, the inhabitants of Asad's own village Dhauna founded Shaheed Asad Collegiate Girls School and College.

At around noon on 20 January 1969, the students enacted their planned protest, with a procession in front of Dhaka Medical College Hospital heading towards Chan Khar Pool. Police charged near Chand Khan's bridge, but the protestors resisted. About an hour into the conflict, Asad and other student leaders tried to continue the procession. Asad was shot from very close range by a DSP of police named Bahauddin. Seriously injured, he was admitted to the hospital, where he was declared dead.

After studying at City Law College in Dhaka, Asad sat in 1968 for a second M.A. exam in an effort to receive a better result. At the time of his death in 1969, he was in the final year of his M.A. at Dhaka University's Department of History. He was the president of the Dhaka Hall unit of East Pakistan Students Union and General Secretary of the Dhaka branch of what was at the time the East Pakistan Students Union (EPSU, Menon group).

The catalyst for the events leading to Asad's death include the Six point movement of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the Agartala Conspiracy Case at which Rahman and dozens of others were charged with sedition by the Government of Pakistan. Student groups were already experiencing considerable unrest when, in December 1968, Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani organised a march against the Governors House, in conjunction with several labour associations arranged a Repression Resistance Day on 6 December 1968, and proclaimed a hartal against merchants. On 4 January 1969, an 11-point programme—an expansion of Rahman's six-point movement—was publicised by a coalition of student group leaders, including the group for which Asad served as an officer. In a meeting at Dhaka University on 17 January 1969, student protestors decided to unite all campuses of East Pakistan on 20 January 1969, in strike. Governor Monem Khan sought to prevent the action by imposing Section 144 on the students, under which no more than four persons were permitted to assemble.

Born in Shibpur, Asad graduated from Shibpur High School in 1960 and subsequently studied at Jagannath University (then known as Jagannath College) and Murari Chand College. After passing the latter in 1963, he entered the University of Dhaka, receiving bachelor's in 1966 and master's in 1967. In that year, he organised the Krishak Samity in Shibpur, Monohardi, Raipura and Narsingdi areas at the direction of Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani, President of National Awami Party and Krishak Samity.

Amanullah Mohammad Asaduzzaman (known as Asad; 10 June 1942 – 20 January 1969) was a student activist whose death at the hands of police during a protest on 20 January 1969 "changed the nature of the student-mass movement and ... turned into a mass-upsurge against the Ayub regime and its repressive measures", according to Banglapedia. The Daily Star reports him as one of three martyrs of the 1969 uprising in East Pakistan which "set the stage for the liberation war". He was awarded the Independence Day Award in 2018 posthumously by the Government of Bangladesh.