In the red-soil country of Madhupur in central Bangladesh, the roads can become difficult to navigate when the rains arrive.
The tracks running through villages and forested land are often too muddy for motor vehicles. Farmers still rely on horses to move their crops, pineapples, bananas and other produce to market.
For nearly three decades, Habibur Rahman has made part of his living on those roads.
A farmer from Mominpur village in Tangail, Habibur earns between 15,000 and 20,000 taka a month driving a horse-drawn cart, depending on the season. Each trip, usually covering no more than two kilometres, brings him 400 to 500 taka.
For seven years, he worked with the same horse. He bought it when it was three years old and used it almost daily to carry agricultural goods along the village roads.
A few months ago, the horse became ill. It could no longer pull the cart. Habibur took it into the Madhupur forest and released it.
He has not seen it since.
“In our area, owners release horses into the forest when they become old or sick,” he told Daily Waadaa. “They spend the final part of their lives in the open forest.”
Habibur spoke of the decision as an ordinary part of owning a working horse. Feeding an animal that can no longer earn its keep is expensive. A horse needs grass and roughly two kilograms of grain-based feed every day, along with veterinary treatment when it falls ill.
For a farmer whose livelihood depends on the animal's ability to work, those costs can become difficult to justify. Later, what happened to Habibur's horse is unknown.
But across Bangladesh, the fate of horses that have outlived their working usefulness has become part of a larger and increasingly troubling trade.
In the river islands of the Jamuna, the forests of Tangail and Mymensingh and other remote parts of the country, old and injured horses are routinely abandoned or sold for a fraction of their original value.
Some die without treatment. Others are collected by traders who transport them to clandestine slaughterhouses, where their meat is processed and, according to police and animal welfare investigators, sold into the food supply.
The trade operates largely beyond official scrutiny. Bangladesh does not maintain a national count of its horses. There is no comprehensive system for tracking their ownership, sale or eventual disposal. Dedicated facilities for retired working horses are virtually nonexistent.
An animal capable of pulling a cart can generate 10,000 to 20,000 taka a month. Once it becomes unfit for work, its value can fall to as little as 2,000 taka.
That difference has helped create a market in which an exhausted working animal can be worth more dead than alive.
Every Thursday, traders gather at Tulshipur in Jamalpur for one of Bangladesh's largest horse markets.
The animals arrive from river islands, farming villages and districts where horse-drawn carts remain part of the local transport system. Some are young and capable of pulling heavy loads. Others are older, weakened by years of work or no longer suitable for regular use.
During a visit by Waadaa, roughly 120 to 150 horses were on sale. Traders said the number can rise to 300 or 400 during the crop-harvesting season.
Prices range from about 5,000 taka to more than 100,000 taka, depending on an animal's age, size and ability to work.
For buyers seeking a productive horse, strength and endurance determine the price. For those buying animals for slaughter, the calculation is different.
Sirajul Islam, a trader who brought four horses from Sariakandi in Bogura, said horse-drawn carts remain indispensable in many settlements along the Jamuna River.
“There is strong demand for horse-drawn carts in the Jamuna chars,” he said. “These carts are used to transport crops, goods and people.”
But once an animal becomes unfit for work, he said, its owner often faces a choice between continuing to pay for its upkeep and getting rid of it.
“When a horse becomes unfit for work, people leave it in the char because many do not want to bear the cost of feeding and treating it,” Sirajul said. “Others sell them there for as little as 2,000–5,000 taka.”
Horses can remain useful for transporting goods for 10 to 12 years, although their working lives vary with their health and treatment. Depending on the animal and the cart, they may be used to move loads of 20 to 30 maunds.
The physical demands are substantial. Many spend years pulling heavy carts over uneven roads, often without adequate veterinary care. When their strength begins to fail, the economic relationship between owner and animal changes abruptly.
Police say some of the horses sold cheaply at Tulshipur and other markets are bought by traders who slaughter them in Jamalpur or transport them to facilities closer to Dhaka.
On August 23, police in Jamalpur detained five people allegedly transporting approximately 1,000 kilograms of horse meat from 13 slaughtered animals. Investigators said the consignment was intended for restaurants in the capital.
According to police, the group had been buying horses at Tulshipur, slaughtering them and supplying the meat to Dhaka on a regular basis.
The meat was reportedly purchased in Jamalpur for about 300 taka a kilogram and sold in Dhaka for 400 taka. Investigators alleged that some of it was subsequently passed off to restaurant customers as beef.
Md Najmul Haque, officer-in-charge of the Narundi Police Investigation Centre under Jamalpur Sadar, said the operation was not new.
“They collected horses from different places, particularly from the Tulshipur market,” he told Waadaa. “They supplied the meat to Dhaka every week.”
After slaughtering the animals, he said, those involved disposed of the heads and hides in the river. The case offered a glimpse of a supply chain that investigators and animal welfare groups believe extends across several districts.
A review of media reports found incidents involving horse meat, slaughtered animals or live horses apparently destined for slaughter at at least 15 locations since 2019. Seven such incidents were reported in 2026 alone.
Gazipur, Narayanganj and Munshiganj have emerged repeatedly in these reports. In Gazipur, authorities have recovered horse meat or live horses at seven locations over the past 18 months.
Similar discoveries have been reported in Jamalpur, Dinajpur, Mymensingh and Gaibandha.
Officials believe many of the animals originated in the river islands along the Jamuna or the forested areas of Tangail and Mymensingh, where horses that can no longer work are frequently abandoned.
The full scale of the trade remains unknown.
In November 2025, law enforcement officers and animal welfare workers entered a facility in the Hyderabad area of Gazipur city.
They found 37 severely diseased horses alive and meat from eight slaughtered horses.
The surviving animals were rescued with assistance from the Department of Livestock Services, Obhoyaronno–Bangladesh Animal Welfare Foundation and A K Khan Healthcare Trust.
A month later, another operation in West Shaildub, Kashimpur, uncovered seven seriously ill horses and the remains of 10 slaughtered animals. Nine day labourers working at the site were detained. The owners escaped.
Across the two operations, Obhoyaronno took responsibility for 42 rescued horses. Most were old, severely underweight or suffering from untreated injuries and disease.
Nine subsequently died.
Sherfehnaz Khan, director of A K Khan Healthcare Trust and a patron of Obhoyaronno, said the animals bore the physical evidence of years of difficult work and neglect.
Some had ropes tied so tightly around their limbs that the restraints had cut into the skin, producing severe wounds and abnormal tissue growth.
Others had injuries associated with pulling carts and carriages. One horse, believed to have worked on urban roads, had sustained an injury to an eye, possibly in a collision with a vehicle.
The injuries suggested that the horses had received little care even before they entered the slaughter trade. The conditions at the facilities raised another concern.
Investigators recovered processed meat cut into cubes and packed in five- and 10-kilogram quantities. For Sherfehnaz, the packaging was significant. It suggested that the meat was being prepared for distribution rather than personal consumption.
“The volume of meat recovered, together with the way it had been packaged, was clearly inconsistent with household or personal consumption,” she said.
The findings, she argued, pointed to an organised commercial operation capable of supplying restaurants, hotels and other food businesses.
But the investigators did not establish the complete chain of buyers and sellers or identify every business that may have received the meat. The processing conditions were particularly alarming.
According to Sherfehnaz, there was no meaningful separation between meat being prepared for sale, live horses, animal waste and carcasses. The facilities lacked basic hygiene and food-safety safeguards.
Some of the animals were visibly ill. Their condition raised questions about the safety of meat that might have entered the market without veterinary inspection.
Certain infectious diseases, including some forms of tuberculosis, can pass between animals and humans through exposure to infected tissues or contaminated animal products. The discoveries did not establish that consumers had contracted such diseases, but the conditions described by rescuers presented potential public-health risks.
The economics of the operation were straightforward.
A horse that can no longer work may be purchased for only 2,000 or 3,000 taka. A study published in Advances in Animal and Veterinary Sciences in 2024 found that adult horses examined in Bangladesh weighed, on average, roughly 160 to 166 kilograms, depending on sex and age.
Not all of that weight can be sold as meat. Even so, the difference between the low purchase price of a discarded animal and the reported wholesale price of horse meat creates a substantial financial incentive.
Sherfehnaz believes the trade involves an organised network rather than isolated slaughter operations. “They collect discarded horses and select isolated locations around Dhaka where the animals are slaughtered and the meat is processed,” she said.
She said operators deliberately recruit day labourers from outside the immediate area, making it harder to identify those financing and controlling the facilities.
Police have made arrests, but animal welfare campaigners say enforcement has done little to disrupt the underlying business.
Sherfehnaz said authorities had informed her organisation of previous cases in which penalties amounted to about 50,000 taka.
Such fines, she argued, are too small to discourage a trade capable of generating much larger returns.
Bangladesh's horse population is something of an administrative blind spot.
The Department of Livestock Services does not include horses in its regular livestock statistics. Researchers and animal welfare organisations estimate that the country may have hundreds of thousands of horses, but there is no reliable official count.
A study published in the European Journal of Veterinary Medicine in 2023 found that approximately 70% of horses surveyed were primarily used for transportation. Only 11.5% were involved in racing.
Others are used for entertainment or by government institutions.
In the chars of northern Bangladesh, horses remain particularly valuable. River erosion, shifting sandbars and seasonal flooding make permanent roads difficult to maintain. In the forests around Madhupur, unpaved tracks can become impassable to motor vehicles during the monsoon.
Horse-drawn carts fill the gap. Yet the systems that depend on these animals provide little protection once they are no longer productive.
Mohammad Shahjaman Khan, acting director general of the Department of Livestock Services, acknowledged that the department does not maintain statistics on horses.
He told Waadaa that the government veterinarians nevertheless provide treatment when owners seek assistance.
“Veterinary doctors study all animals other than humans,” he said. “So if someone's horse becomes sick, we arrange treatment for it.” That provision does not amount to a system for monitoring working conditions, preventing abandonment or tracing animals sold into the slaughter trade.
Bangladesh has several laws that could be used to address the problem.
The Animal Slaughtering and Meat Quality Control Act, 2011, does not include horses among the animals approved for slaughter. The Food Safety Act, 2013, provides penalties for unsafe meat processing, unhygienic food production and violations of food-business requirements.
The Animal Welfare Act, 2019, also contains provisions against cruelty and mistreatment. Taken together, these laws provide grounds for action against unlawful slaughter, unsafe meat distribution and the abuse of working horses.
The difficulty, animal welfare organisations say, is enforcement.
In May, Obhoyaronno, A K Khan Healthcare Trust and actress Jaya Ahsan filed a writ petition with the High Court seeking action against the commercial trade in horse meat.
The court directed the ministries responsible for livestock, health and the environment to prepare a coordinated plan and guidelines to prevent the illegal trade and submit a report within 90 days.
The petition followed repeated attempts by campaigners to draw the authorities' attention to the conditions uncovered at slaughter facilities.
Sherfehnaz said her organisation had submitted two formal reports to ministries and police authorities, documenting the discoveries and the potential public-health implications. “We saw little progress or indication that the matter was being adequately investigated,” she said.
The 42 horses recovered during the Gazipur operations presented Obhoyaronno with an immediate problem: where to keep them.
Most required veterinary attention. Some were too weak to stand or move normally. Others had chronic injuries that could not be treated quickly. Bangladesh has no established network of sanctuaries for retired working horses.
Sherfehnaz believes that gap is central to the problem.
With adequate care, she said, horses in Bangladesh can live for as long as 25 years. Yet many of the animals rescued by her organisation were no older than 12. Their working lives had ended well before their natural life expectancy.
She has called for dedicated sanctuaries where old, injured and abandoned horses can receive treatment and live without being forced back into labour.
The Department of Livestock Services is considering a similar proposal.
Shahjaman said field officials had suggested creating a rescue centre for old horses and other animals. He had also discussed the possibility with the Forest Department, which manages land that might accommodate such a facility.
“When horses become old, their owners abandon them in chars,” he said. “If we could rescue them and keep them in one place, the animals would be protected.”
Discussions are continuing, he said. But not everyone involved in animal welfare believes sanctuaries should be the immediate priority.
Rubaiya Ahmad, the founder of Obhoyaronno, worries that focusing on shelters could leave the economic and regulatory conditions behind the abuse largely unchanged.
“Shelters can easily become places where people simply dump animals,” she told Waadaa.
Her organisation's experience with confiscated horses has made her sceptical of rescue efforts that are not accompanied by sustained government oversight.
According to Rubaiya, authorities in Gazipur repeatedly asked Obhoyaronno to take custody of seized horses but did not subsequently check on their condition.
“Gazipur authorities were more than happy to repeatedly ask Obhoyaronno to take in confiscated horses, but they never once followed up to see how those horses were doing,” she said.
When the organisation declined a third request to accept more horses, she said, the calls stopped. Obhoyaronno later learned that some confiscated horses had been sold at auction.
For Rubaiya, that discovery illustrated a serious flaw in the system. Animals removed from suspected abuse or illegal slaughter operations could eventually be returned to the same commercial market.
“We did not stop wondering what happened to the other confiscated horses,” she said. “Eventually, we found out that they had been sold back through auction.”
The experience has led her to argue for regulation of the entire working-horse economy, including ownership, trading, transport, veterinary care and the disposal of animals that can no longer work.
“The main problem, as I see it, is that there is a huge, largely underground economy involving working horses,” she said. “It needs to be brought to the surface, regulated, held accountable and properly supervised.”
Without such oversight, she believes, individual rescues will do little to prevent new animals from entering the same system.
For Habibur Rahman, back in Mominpur, the decision was made months ago.
The horse he had bought at three years old had carried crops and other goods for seven years, helping him earn a living on roads where motor vehicles could not always travel.
When it became too sick to continue, he released it into the forest, as other owners in his village had done.
He does not know whether it survived, was found by someone else or eventually entered the trade that has brought unwanted horses from Bangladesh's forests and river islands to slaughterhouses around Dhaka.
He knows only that it could no longer pull his cart. And that was when he let it go.
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