People from all walks of life will pay their last respects to Toufique Imrose Khalidi, editor-in-chief of bdnews24.com and a pioneer of digital journalism in Bangladesh who died in London, on Saturday afternoon.

His body will arrive in Bangladesh from the United Kingdom on Saturday morning, bdnews24.com Chief of Correspondents Mainul Alam told UNB.

The coffin will then be taken to his residence, where family members and relatives will pay their last respects.

The body will be kept at the Banani Old DOHS playground from 2pm to 3pm, where friends, relatives, colleagues, well-wishers and representatives from different sectors of society will pay their final tributes.

His namaz-e-janaza will be held at the same venue at 3:00pm and later Toufique Imrose Khalidi will be laid to rest at the Martyred Intellectuals Graveyard in Mirpur at 5:00pm.

Meanwhile, his son Rad Sharar Khalidi has urged people across the country to pray for his father's eternal peace.

Toufique Imrose Khalidi passed away at a hospital in London on October 2 at the age of 59 following brain haemorrhage.

Born on June 14, 1967, Khalidi earned his master's degree in English Literature from Dhaka University before embarking on a career in journalism in 1989 with The Sunday Express.

Over a career spanning more than three decades, he held key positions across national and international media. He worked at the BBC World Service in London from February 2000 to June 2005.

Prior to that, he served at The Daily Star as Joint News Editor and Weekend Edition News Editor (1998-2000), Business Editor (1997-1998), and Diplomatic Correspondent (1991-1993), as well as Assistant Editor and Senior Correspondent at The Financial Express.

In the first half of 2005, Toufique Imrose Khalidi associated with bdnews24.com, pioneering Bangladesh's first internet-based 24/7 news service.

He received fellowships from the Journalists in Europe Foundation in Paris and the Japan Foreign Press Centre.

In 2014, he was named one of the “14 leading digital media innovators” across Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and West Asia at the South-to-South Media Dialogue in South Africa.

Toufique Imrose Khalidi chaired a UNESCO World Press Freedom Day event in 2016, attended the 2009 UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen as an observer, participated in the Global Media Forum in Bonn (2010, 2016, 2017, 2019), and spoke as a panelist at Harvard University’s "Bangladesh Rising" conference in 2018.

He also played a vital role in national policy formulation, serving on national committees for online media policy (2012, 2015), the news agency policy committee (2008), and the national task force for Dhaka river protection (2007).

In December 2017, the Bangladesh government conferred a special award on him on National ICT Day.