Dr Razee was the father-in-law of Amanullah Khan, chairman of the news agency UNB and a life and donour member and former treasurer of Shandhani National Eye Donation Society (SNEDS), said a press release of SNEDS.

He was at the forefront of all political struggles and socio-cultural movements in the country to establish democracy, human rights and freedom of expression.

Dr Razee, an independent member of the then Pakistan National Assembly during 1965 to 1969, played a sheet anchor role not only in defending freedom and democracy but also in pleading the cause of the then East Pakistani Bengalees who were subjected to unjust domination, discrimination and deprivation by the ruling elites of the then West Pakistan in all walks of life.

That was the narrative despite East Pakistan being the major contributor to Pakistan’s economy in terms of export earnings and the Bengalees forming the majority population.

His forceful portrayal of the growing disparity between the Bengalees and non-Bengalees and prediction in 1965 that Pakistan could disintegrate along the East and West divide fuelled demands for an independent Bangladesh that eventually kindled the spark of Liberation War culminating in the emergence of a new nation state of Bangladesh.

Dr Razee was a leading honorary defence counsel in the historic Agartala Case in 1967 in which Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and others were charged with treason. In the face of intimidation and life threats, he defended the accused in a landmark trial that lasted till 1969, the release said.

He was also a prolific writer who authored several books. His well-documented and carefully researched monumental work “The Constitutional Glimpses of Martial Law in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh” published posthumously by the University Press Ltd Dhaka was hailed as a charter of freedom for the fledging and fragile democracies in the region.

One of his works of fiction in Bengali ‘On Trekking through to Arakan’ was set in the backdrop of the Second World War that left a trail of humanitarian disaster in Myanmar.

A best seller, the book is a heart rending tale of woes and sufferings that continues to move the readers to this day. This story is a veiled foreboding of darker days to unfold in a most savage and barbaric form as if to square the circle in the same land that has been condemned worldwide as ethnic cleansing and genocide.

The perpetrators of these heinous crimes, Myanmar army and Buddhist monks, forced members of Muslim-majority ethnic minority Rohingyas to flee across the border to neighbouring Bangladesh in a string of perilous journeys in hundreds of thousands for their lives seeking shelter in makeshift camps in Cox’s Bazar.

Different voluntary, socio-cultural organisations and educational institutions have chalked out separate programmes to mark the occasion.

Discussion meetings on the life and works of Razee are being organised among others by SNEDS, City Law College, Dhaka, Nagarpur Government College, Nagarpur, and Dr Aleem Al-Razee High School, Lawhati, Tangail.

Dr Aleem-AI-Razee Memorial Council members will lay floral wreaths and offer ‘fateha’ at his graveyard in Banani in the morning and hold a milad mahfil in Razee’s remembrance on the day in his native village.

In a media statement, SNEDS president Professor Dr Tosaddeque Hossain Siddiqui and Secretary General Dr Md Joynal Islam appealed to the public to come forward and donate eyes posthumously to restore sight to over one and a half million blind people in the country by emulating the noble example set by Dr Razee.

Also an Islamic and Arabic scholar of great repute, Dr Razee was the third person in Bangladesh to donate his eyes breaking the taboo that Islam forbids donations of eyes and other organs.

Dr Razee dedicated his entire life to promoting humanitarian and social causes. He donated a large part of his income earned as a practising lawyer, his village property to the school founded in his name and his vast private collection of rare and invaluable books to the Bangladesh Bar Association library.