Two curious images of what appears to be BNP chief Khaleda Zia’s passport have been recently floating around facebook.

The first passport that expired on May 2014 mentions Khaleda Zia’s birthday as August 5, 1946. The second passport—a machine readable one—also mentions the same date as her birthday.

However upon close scrutiny, we have found that the images have been photoshopped to further stir the controversy over Khaleda Zia’s actual date of birth. It is likely that Khaleda Zia’s passports, both issued after 2009, did mention her date of birth as August 15, 1946.

The date of birth in old passport has been encircled in a way that it can cover the number 1 and keep the number 5 within the circle. This passport shows her as the leader of the opposition.

Fake scan copy of Khaleda's passport

The MRP one shows August 05, 1946 as her date of birth—where it is likely that the number 1 has been replaced by a 0. The most solid proof of this manipulation is found at the bottom of the scan where two rows of numbers and letters representing the basic information of the passport holder. In the bottom row, the information about her date of birth remains unchanged as it shows “BGD19460815”. This means the faker had forgotten to manipulate this part.

It appears that the fakers did so because there is already a lack of credibility over the date of birth of Khaleda Zia. Khaleda Zia now has four birth dates: August 5, 1944; August 19, 1947; September 5, 1946 and August 15, 1946.

Khaleda Zia had been celebrating August 15 as her birthday since the mid-nineties. Before that, we never heard of her birthday celebration.

Her August 15 birthday “coincides” with Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s death anniversary. Most people believe that this was being done to undermine Bangabandu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman—the father of the nation. It’s as if, instead of condoling on that day, people should be celebrating—because it is Khaleda Zia’s birthday.

In the past, various media reports point to different dates of her birth. One report says in her matriculation examination form, Khaleda had mentioned September 5, 1946 as her birthday.

Her marriage certificate and in the record of her prime ministerial oath, Khaleda had used August 5, 1944 and August 19, 1947 as her birthdays.

When Sheikh Hasina came to power in 1996, she had declared August 15 as a national holiday with the status of national mourning day. When Khaleda was elected to power in 2001, she scrapped August 15 as the status of the national mourning day and national holiday. This was restored after Hasina again came to power in 2009.

APOLOGY

The Daily Star Online ran a report on the passport scans on August 13. As it was a clever Photoshop manipulation we made a mistake in believing in the scans. We apologise to our readers for our mistake.