A commission set up to investigate the issue of enforced disappearances in Bangladesh announced last week that at least 330 people who were reportedly picked up by authorities and vanished without a trace are believed to be dead.
Moinul Islam Chowdhury, who leads the Commission of Enquiry on Enforced Disappearances (CEED), told a press conference that top officials who served under Sheikh Hasina — the prime minister who stepped down and fled to neighboring India in August following anti-government protests — were involved in orchestrating the reported crimes.
During Hasina’s 15-year rule, from 2009 to 2024, more than 700 enforced disappearances were reported, according to the Bangladeshi human rights organization Odhikar.
After the formation of the five-member commission, however, reports of more disappearances came to light, with the figure now standing at 1,752.
Though some victims of enforced disappearances returned home alive, others were reportedly found dead.
During the press conference on March 4, Chowdhury said the commission was looking into the possibility that some of the victims might be incarcerated in India.
“We have received a list of 1,067 Bangladeshis incarcerated in Indian prisons over the last two to two and a half years. We are in the process of checking if any of them were victims of enforced disappearance,” he said.
Nasrin Jahan Smrity told DW that she felt shattered after listening to Chowdhury’s statement.
Her husband, Ismail Hossain Baten, an activist belonging to the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, has been missing since 2019.
“For six years, I have been waiting for my husband after RAB men abducted him,” she said, referring to Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), an elite counterterrorism force.
“Following the ouster of Sheikh Hasina, when a few of the enforced disappearance victims were released after years of captivity, I hoped my husband too would come out soon,” she said.
“Now, the statement from the commission chairman has shattered all our hopes. My children have been crying inconsolably since we heard the news,” she added.
Hasina has long drawn sharp criticism from rights groups for ruling with an iron fist.
In 2021, Human Rights Watch said in a report that “despite credible and consistent evidence” of enforced disappearances, Hasina’s then-ruling Awami League party ignored widespread calls to “address the culture of impunity.”
After Hasina’s ouster in 2024, Abdullahil Amaan Azmi, a former brigadier general, and lawyer Ahmad Bin Kashem were freed — after having been missing for eight years following their abductions.
A day later, political activist Michael Chakma — missing since 2019 — was released from captivity.
Azmi, Kashem and Chakma said they were tortured inside a secret DGFI-operated prison named Aynaghar, meaning “house of mirrors” in Bengali.
According to rights groups, RAB, DGFI, the police and other security and intelligence agencies were involved in enforced disappearances of individuals during Hasina’s time in power.
After Hasina’s ouster, the DGFI released a statement acknowledging that many Bangladeshis became victims of enforced disappearances during Hasina’s time in office.
“But we are not holding anyone in captivity now,” the statement read.
Sazzad Hussain, a member of the CEED, said the team found no trace of the locations of 330 victims in the more than 1,000 cases they have scrutinized so far.
“We have visited many offices of different intelligence agencies and security forces, and exposed 14 secret detention centers in different locations in Dhaka and outside Dhaka,” he said.
“The commission did not find any survivors or trace of victims in those detention centers. Among the 1,752 victims of enforced disappearances, 330 persons are still missing,” he added.
Hussain also underlined that the commission had found evidence showing the involvement of topmost officials in Hasina’s government, including herself, in these activities.
“After reviewing the cases, we have already identified several high-ranking officials of the security forces and intelligence agencies who were involved in the disappearances,” he said.
Hasina and her senior officials have repeatedly denied such reports.
Some activists say the DGFI destroyed evidence related to the enforced disappearances soon after Hasina’s downfall.
“That is why the military recently refused to allow access during a government visit to the incommunicado detention centers operated by the DGFI,” Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman of the Capital Punishment Justice Project, which has been documenting rights violations in Bangladesh for over 15 years, told DW.
“The DGFI is a powerful intelligence agency of the armed forces, which enjoys blanket impunity and evades accountability for its actions,” he said.
“When the head of the interim government planned a visit accompanying the victims, journalists and the members of the Enquiry Commission on Enforced Disappearances in early February 2025, the armed forces did their best to conceal their crimes by obstructing access to the detention center.”
Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director of HRW, told DW that the latest statement from the commission is “shattering” for the affected families, who, she said, deserve to know the truth about what happened to their loved ones.
“The interim government should seek a resolution at the HRC to set up an expert mechanism to analyze and preserve evidence that can be used for prosecution either in Bangladesh or elsewhere,” she said.
Families want authorities to keep searching
Families of the victims of enforced disappearances have said the authorities should keep searching for the missing people.
“Many Bangladeshis have been lying in Indian jails for years. There is a possibility that my husband is lying somewhere after he was forcibly sent out of the country. Our authorities should interact with their Indian counterparts and search for the Bangladeshi enforced disappearance victims in those jails,” said Baby Akhtar.
Her husband, Tarikul Islam Tara, has not returned home since he was reportedly picked up by plainclothes policemen in Dhaka in 2012.
Baten’s wife Smrity said she has been doing the rounds of many RAB and other security agency offices over the past years, but so far failed to get any news about him.
“I do not even know what exactly happened to my husband after he was abducted. This is very sad,” said Baby Akhtar.
The article appeared in the dw