Dhaka, Jan 5 — An official inquiry in Bangladesh has found that thousands of people may have been forcibly disappeared during the rule of ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina, with investigators saying the true number could be far higher than recorded cases.
According to a report released on Sunday by the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, at least 1,569 cases were verified as enforced disappearances out of 1,913 complaints received so far. Among these, 287 cases fall under the category of “missing and dead”.
“Among these, 287 allegations have fallen in the ‘Missing and Dead’ category,” the report said. The findings were made public through a Facebook post by Bangladesh’s Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus.
However, commission member Nabila Idris said the scale of enforced disappearances could be significantly larger, estimating the number to be between 4,000 and 6,000.
“Contacting many victims of the missing finds more victims through those who have not contacted us, don’t know about us or have moved to another country,” Idris said. “There are many people with whom, even if we communicate ourselves, they did not agree to speak on record.”
The commission was set up after Hasina was removed from power and fled to India. Its members said the disappearances were driven by “primarily political motives”, targeting opponents of Hasina’s Awami League government.
Data in the report shows that among those who disappeared and later returned alive, 75 percent were members of Jamaat-e-Islami, while 22 percent were members or leaders of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Among those still missing, 68 percent belong to the BNP and affiliated organisations, and 22 percent are linked to Jamaat-e-Islami.
The report also names Hasina as well as her former defence adviser Tarique Ahmed Siddique and ex-home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal as figures against whom evidence has emerged in connection with the disappearances.
It claims that Hasina personally ordered the disappearance of several senior opposition figures, including BNP leaders Ilias Ali, Hummam Quader Chowdhury, Salahuddin Ahmed and Chowdhury Alam, along with Jamaat-e-Islami leaders Abdullahil Amaan Azmi, Mir Ahmad Bin Quasem and Maruf Zaman.
Hasina was sentenced to death in absentia in November over the violent crackdown by security forces on the 2024 student-led protests, which left hundreds dead.
Chief Adviser Yunus described the inquiry’s work as unprecedented and urged the country to confront the legacy of state violence.
“This report is a documentation of how people can be treated with democracy by shaking all the institutions in Bangladesh in double standards,” Yunus said.
“Those who made this horrible incident are people like us. They are living normal lives in society by causing the most brutal events. We as a nation must come out of this atrocity forever,” he added. “We need to find the cure to let this atrocity never return.”
The report comes amid political transition in Bangladesh, following the death last month of former prime minister and BNP leader Khaleda Zia. Her passing has raised questions about the future of opposition politics and whether her son, Tarique Rahman, will carry forward her political legacy.