Mahbub’s wife, Anarkali Farhad Banu Nagina Amin, is the elder sister of BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir.
After retiring from the Bangladesh Army, Mahbub had joined BNP and was elected MP with the party ticket from Dinajpur-2 constituency in the eighth parliamentary election.
He was also made a member of BNP’s standing committee, the highest policymaking body of the party. Mahbub, however, quitted the party and politics in September 2019 on health grounds.