The Bangladesh Coast Guard has questioned three members of the family of the missing fisherman Miraj Sheikh since April, conducting what police described as an “internal inquiry” into a disappearance in which the family has accused Coast Guard personnel themselves.
The unusual arrangement — a security force gathering statements from the relatives of a man it is suspected of detaining — has alarmed human rights advocates and added another layer of uncertainty to the case of 30 year old Miraj.
Human Rights Watch has described Miraj’s disappearance as the first known case of alleged enforced disappearance in Bangladesh since the July 2024 uprising.
Miraj’s wife, Mukta Khatun, his mother and his sister were questioned by Coast Guard officers at Mongla police station, according to the family. The officers asked questions and recorded their answers, but the family says significant details about Miraj’s alleged detention were left out of the written statements.
The Coast Guard, which has repeatedly denied detaining Miraj, has offered no clear public explanation of who authorized the questioning or what the inquiry was intended to establish. Officials contacted its Western Zone office and a nearby station said they had no information about it.
The episode stems from what happened on April 10, when Miraj, a fisherman, disappeared near the Sundarbans.
His family and witnesses say Coast Guard personnel detained him. The next day, Mukta went looking for him at the force’s Digraj base.
Mukta said a Coast Guard member she identified as Uka Shing told her: “Your husband is here. He is being taken on an operation. Come in the afternoon and you will be able to see him.”
She said she also heard another Coast Guard member say: “Give Miraj something to eat. He hasn’t eaten since yesterday. We are taking him on an operation.”
Mukta waited for hours. When she returned at about 4 pm, she said, personnel on duty told her that nobody named Miraj was there.
Miraj has not been seen since.
Mukta said she recounted those details when Coast Guard officers questioned her at Mongla police station, but that some were missing from the statement they prepared.
Miraj’s sister, Liza Islam, submitted her own written statement. She said officers had recorded the answers of her mother and sister-in-law “in their own way” and that several cameras were used during the questioning. Human rights workers involved in the case said some of the questions appeared to be leading.
“Why would the Coast Guard suddenly come and take our statements?” Liza told Daily Waadaa. “The allegation is against the Coast Guard itself. If they took my brother and made him disappear, how can the Coast Guard investigate the case?”
Talking with Waadaa, Mongla police chief Atikur Rahman said police were conducting a separate investigation based on a missing-person general diary filed over Miraj’s disappearance.
“We are investigating the missing-person GD. We are conducting the investigation ourselves,” he said.
Police had made no progress in locating Miraj, he added.
Rahman initially said he was unaware of a separate Coast Guard investigation. Asked specifically about the questioning at the police station, he said it was an “internal inquiry” by the Coast Guard and was independent of the police investigation.
“It is their own internal inquiry,” he said.
For rights advocates, that distinction does little to resolve the central problem: the institution accused by the family of involvement in the disappearance is itself questioning the family.
“Since the Coast Guard is suspected by the family and local people of being involved in the incident, any such action by them could create suspicion and fear among people,” said Nur Khan Liton, a human rights defender and former member of the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances.
Whether the process was called an inquiry or an investigation, Liton told Waadaa, it would be difficult for the Coast Guard to conduct it credibly because of the allegations against the force.
Liton also questioned why the family had not received a formal written notice.
“If they are conducting an inquiry, they should have been sent a written letter, a formal notice,” he said. “Instead, they were summoned through the police station.”
Abu Ahmed Faijul Kabir, a senior coordinator at Ain o Salish Kendra, said the allegations against the Coast Guard made due process particularly important.
“This is a highly sensitive matter,” he told Waadaa. “This case of alleged enforced disappearance emerged at a time when we thought Bangladesh had moved beyond the era of enforced disappearances. The fact that the victim’s family is now being summoned and questioned again raises serious questions.”
Yet Coast Guard officials contacted by Waadaa could not explain the inquiry.
A contingent commander at the force’s Harbaria station, where Miraj’s family had previously sought information about him, said he did not know about the questioning.
“I don’t know exactly, because it wasn’t done here,” he said. “Our main office may have taken the statements. I’m not aware of it.”
Tasnim, a staff member at the Coast Guard’s Western Zone operations room, similarly said the office had no information about the questioning.
“We have no information like that in our control room,” he told Waadaa.
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