Mayer Daak has welcomed the government’s proposed law criminalising enforced disappearance but warned that leaving investigations primarily in the hands of police could undermine the independence of probes.
It will also weaken protections promised to victims and their families, and ultimately blunt the law’s ability to prevent a recurrence of one of Bangladesh’s most notorious forms of state abuse, said the Dhaka-based rights organization.
The warning comes days after the Cabinet gave final approval, subject to Law Ministry vetting, to the draft Enforced Disappearance Prevention and Remedy Act, 2026, recognising enforced disappearance as a distinct, cognisable, non-bailable and non-compoundable criminal offence.
The approval came at a Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Tarique Rahman at the Secretariat.
The proposed law provides for life imprisonment and fines for enforced disappearance. If a victim dies and the body is recovered, or remains unaccounted for — alive or dead — for five years, the punishment could be death or life imprisonment, alongside a fine of up to 1 crore taka. Investigations would have to be completed within 120 days, with trials to be concluded within another 120 days.
It also contains provisions for legal aid, medical treatment and rehabilitation, a compensation fund for victims’ families, search warrants to locate disappeared persons, trials in absentia, admissibility of digital evidence and protection for witnesses, complainants, informants and victims.
Families would be able to use a disappeared person’s property for the maintenance of spouses and dependants, while disappearance certificates could facilitate inheritance after five years. A central database and mechanisms for international cooperation are also envisaged.
But in a statement dated August 7, Mayer Daak said those protections could mean little if the mechanism responsible for establishing what happened to a disappeared person is itself not independent.
Mayer Daak described the government’s initiative to introduce the law as “extremely important and timely,” particularly welcoming the recognition of enforced disappearance as a distinct criminal offence.
It also welcomed provisions determining the responsibility of perpetrators, compensation and rehabilitation for victims and their families, protection of property rights, remedies before higher courts and witness protection, saying their inclusion could help establish a powerful accountability mechanism.
The organisation, however, said the effectiveness of the entire law ultimately rests on one fundamental issue: the independence and impartiality of investigations.
Under the present draft, Mayer Daak said, responsibility for investigating allegations of enforced disappearance has been entrusted to the police. At the same time, police are themselves included among the forces that could potentially be accused of involvement in an enforced disappearance.
That, the organisation said, creates a clear conflict of interest.
If an allegation is made against police personnel, the police would effectively have to investigate their own force. Even when an allegation concerns another force, the investigation would remain confined within essentially the same law-enforcement structure, creating questions over whether such an investigation could remain genuinely independent.
Mayer Daak said it would also be extremely difficult for an ordinary investigating officer to secure necessary information and cooperation from another force when investigating allegations against its members.
The consequences, it warned, would go beyond the investigation itself.
The proposed law recognises a disappeared person as a victim and provides rights to compensation, property management and remedies before higher courts. But each of those rights would ultimately depend on whether an effective investigation could establish the disappearance and the circumstances surrounding it.
If the investigation fails, Mayer Daak said, the victim’s family could in practice be deprived of the very rights the legislation promises them.
The organisation also raised concerns over Section 21, which provides for up to five years’ imprisonment for a complainant over a false or malicious allegation.
Mayer Daak said officials clearly need protection against deliberately fabricated allegations. But it argued that the provision becomes particularly problematic if the investigation itself is not independent.
A genuine allegation could fail to be proved because of institutional limitations or a lack of independence within the investigating agency, it said. In such circumstances, the complainant or the victim’s family could potentially face criminal liability simply because they were unable to substantiate an allegation through a process over which they had no control.
That possibility, Mayer Daak warned, could discourage victims and families from coming forward in the first place.
The criticism has particular resonance because allegations of enforced disappearance have not entirely disappeared with the political transition that followed the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government on August 5, 2024.
In July, Human Rights Watch described the alleged disappearance of 30-year-old fisherman Miraj Sheikh as the first known enforced disappearance case since the July 2024 uprising.
According to Human Rights Watch, multiple witnesses said Coast Guard personnel detained Sheikh on the night of April 10 at Joymonir Ghol near the Sundarbans in Mongla and took him away in a speedboat.
His family went to the Coast Guard office in Digraj the following day and said they were initially told that Sheikh was “on an operation” and should return later. When they returned, officials allegedly told them he had never been there. The Coast Guard has denied detaining Sheikh or having information about his whereabouts.
Sheikh’s family subsequently filed a complaint, held a news conference and contacted government officials. After his father filed a habeas corpus petition, the High Court on July 12 ordered law-enforcement agencies to locate Sheikh and produce him before the court within 15 days, according to Human Rights Watch.
HRW said the case appeared to reproduce patterns associated with past abuses and warned that the continuation of police-led investigations would not provide the institutional safeguards needed to prevent enforced disappearances.
The controversy sits against a much larger legacy.
A commission established by the post-August 2024 interim government identified 1,569 enforced disappearance cases between 2009 and 2024. Of those, 1,282 people eventually resurfaced after periods of secret detention, while at least 251 never returned and are presumed dead. Bodies were recovered in another 36 cases. The commission itself described those figures as a substantial undercount.
Its findings implicated several security and law-enforcement agencies, including the police’s Detective Branch and Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit, the Rapid Action Battalion and the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence.
Following the August 2024 change of government, Bangladesh acceded to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
The interim administration later promulgated the National Human Rights Commission Ordinance, 2025 and the Enforced Disappearance Prevention and Redress Ordinance, 2025, which rights groups said provided stronger mechanisms for independent investigation.
Those ordinances subsequently lapsed after the elected BNP government took office in February 2026.
The current government has now moved ahead with its own legislation, introducing a wide range of criminal penalties and remedies for victims while retaining police involvement in investigations — the provision at the centre of Mayer Daak’s objection.
Mayer Daak stressed that it is not calling for the proposed legislation to be rewritten wholesale.
Instead, it called for a limited amendment to Section 14, saying responsibility for investigating allegations of enforced disappearance should be placed with an independent, impartial and competent investigative body.
Such an arrangement, it said, would not prevent the police or other forces from providing necessary cooperation. Rather, it would preserve cooperation while ensuring that the investigation itself remained institutionally independent.
According to Mayer Daak, an independent mechanism would allow the proposed law’s provisions for compensation, rehabilitation and other remedies to operate effectively because those rights depend on credible findings from an investigation.
It would also protect investigating officers from institutional pressure, the organisation said.
More broadly, Mayer Daak argued that creating such a mechanism would send an important message at home and abroad: no force in Bangladesh would be allowed to control an investigation into serious allegations made against itself.
The organisation said the government could therefore address its principal concerns without dismantling the broader structure of the legislation. It called for Section 14 to be amended so that investigations are conducted independently, impartially and free from institutional conflicts of interest, while retaining necessary cooperation among state agencies.
Ensuring genuinely independent investigations, Mayer Daak said, would allow the proposed provisions on compensation, rehabilitation and other remedies to function in practice and protect investigators from pressure by the institutions whose members might be under scrutiny.
Mayer Daak said it believes that with this “limited but important amendment,” the Enforced Disappearance Prevention and Remedy Act, 2026 could become a historic milestone in securing justice for victims of enforced disappearance, establishing accountability and strengthening the rule of law in Bangladesh.
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