The disappearance of Miraj Sheikh has reopened a sensitive debate in post-uprising Bangladesh: whether the country has dismantled the structures that enabled enforced disappearances for more than a decade, or merely changed the government that once controlled them.

Witnesses say Coast Guard personnel picked up Miraj from a tea stall near the Sundarbans on April 10. He has not been seen since. The Coast Guard denies ever detaining him. 

The High Court has since ordered the authorities to produce him, while Human Rights Watch has described the case as the first known alleged enforced disappearance since the July Uprising.

The allegations come as Parliament considers new legislation on enforced disappearances and the National Human Rights Commission, laws the government says will strengthen accountability but critics argue will weaken independent oversight.

To discuss the Miraj case, the legacy of the Awami League-era disappearance apparatus, and whether Bangladesh's proposed legal framework is equipped to prevent its return, Daily Waadaa spoke with Dr Nabila Idris, a former member of the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances and a former National Human Rights Commissioner.

Q: What did the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances find about enforced disappearance under the Awami League?

A: Between 2009-2024, we estimated 4,000-6,000 cases. More than 250 people remain missing. We found it wasn't a few rogue officers. Most major security and intelligence organisations were implicated, as well as the Awami League leadership. That enforced disappearances stopped overnight on Aug. 5, 2024, shows it was never a national security requirement. It was a political choice, so political change stopped it.

Q: Is the Miraj Sheikh case important?

A: It tests whether we have built systems capable of finding the truth. The family and Coast Guard are telling opposite stories. An accused institution cannot settle a dispute by denying the accusation, so Bangladesh needs a body that can independently establish what happened.

Q: Critics may say you are being alarmist about a single allegation.

A: It would be alarmist to say one allegation proves the old system is back. I am not saying that. One alleged offence is not 15 years of coordinated, multi-agency crime.

The Awami League will use every unresolved allegation to claim all governments behave as it did, rehabilitating itself not by disproving its crimes against humanity, but by making them look ordinary.

A credible investigation is the government's defence: it clears the force if innocent, or shows this government responds differently if wrongdoing occurred. Right now, no credible independent mechanism exists because the government dismantled it.

Q: What did the government dismantle, and what's wrong with the replacement laws?

A: The interim administration passed two ordinances allowing trained NHRC investigators outside the law-enforcement chain of command to investigate complaints against security forces. Within a month of Parliament's first sitting, the government voided both. It promised "better" laws. Instead, the new bills remove independent investigation and replace it with structural conflicts of interest.

Under the Enforced Disappearance Bill, complaints go to the police. That is a non-starter for three reasons. First, police have themselves been implicated, so the institution is not neutral. Second, police have historically refused such complaints: of 1,500 cases before our Commission, fewer than 250 had GDs. Third, a sub-inspector cannot realistically compel military and intelligence officials to cooperate.

The NHRC Bill is worse. The Commission cannot investigate security forces at all. It can only ask the accused force's commander to investigate his own force. Isn't the conflict obvious? It's the same Hasina-era arrangement.

Q: Isn't a government free to enact new legislation?

A: Absolutely, but that is not my objection. Protections that existed and were deliberately removed are not missing by oversight. Nobody accidentally deletes an independent investigative process and replaces it with a requirement that a force investigate complaints against itself. These are not innocent drafting weaknesses. They are policies.

Q: The current government has condemned enforced disappearances. Should the goodwill not count?

A: I repeatedly hear the prime minister has no intention of restarting enforced disappearance en masse. But treating goodwill alone as deterrence is dangerous. Miraj's case shows why.

Access to justice is my right as a citizen, not a gift from the head of government. Leaders and priorities change, so rights must be baked into law, not left to goodwill. The prime minister cannot supervise every law enforcer's decision. Officers can act without permission.

Independent institutions matter because when the government says it did not authorise something, only an independent body can determine whether that is true. Do we skip good laws against other crimes because most people do not intend to commit them? Rape, perhaps? Why should this logic apply only where the state is implicated?

Q: The government says systematic disappearances fall within the ICT's jurisdiction and only isolated offences will proceed through ordinary courts. Is the division wrong?

A: The division is sound. The problem is sequencing. Systematic crimes do not arrive labelled "systematic". You discover the pattern by independently and competently investigating individual incidents. If those investigations are compromised, the wider case can't be built.

Consider the 2014 Narayanganj seven murder case. We now know widespread enforced disappearance was occurring then. But did we have enough evidence in 2014 or did the Narayanganj case present as an isolated event? So, repeatedly invoking this distinction does not answer the underlying concern: compromised investigation.

Q: Is it not one-sided to call the 2026 bills a regression when they introduce tougher penalties, deadlines, judicial reporting and some other improvements?

A: There are some improvements. But tougher sentences, shorter deadlines, and even Supreme Court involvement do not fix a flawed investigative process. An institution investigating itself can file a report on time and still hide the evidence. In the Miraj case, we remain stuck between two contradictory accounts because every available process depends on law enforcers, who are themselves accused.

The new 10-year mandatory minimum creates a separate risk. Four years of captivity carries the same minimum sentence as a far shorter 36-hour detention. Once a perpetrator faces 10 years regardless, releasing a living victim creates a witness who can imprison him for 10 years. Killing the victim and hiding the body may then appear safer to him. Obviously that's not an argument for leniency, it's a warning that badly designed punishment can increase the victim's danger. I think sentencing should be left to courts, case by case, weighing duration, severity and outcome.

Q: You have publicly said independent investigations are in the security forces' best interests. Why?

A: First, an independent investigation can clear innocent officers in a way their own denial cannot. It's a shield for the forces, not only a check. Assuming the Coast Guard is innocent, don't you think its commander now wishes a trusted independent body could say so?

Second, clear law protects junior officers. When secret captivity becomes an unofficial standard operating procedure, senior officers give orders while subordinates carry them out, sometimes without knowing whether the detention is lawful. They then inherit the criminal consequences. Clear rules and independent oversight protect officers conducting legitimate security operations. Weak law protects the person who orders, not the person following it.

Q: Producing counterintelligence detainees in open court could compromise active operations. Isn't a realistic national security perspective important?

A: That is a legitimate concern. Some counterintelligence cases involve information that cannot be exposed in open court. But our mapping found fewer than 10 genuine counterintelligence captives among roughly 1,500 documented disappearances; even tripling that figure for undercounting keeps it below 30. A narrow exception cannot justify an entire extrajudicial detention system, especially when secret detention was used overwhelmingly against political opponents and civilians.

The Constitution requires a detainee to be produced before a court within 24 hours, regardless of offence. A workable compromise can be a high-security judicial panel before which counterintelligence captives are produced confidentially, for a fixed period, subject to review. That protects sensitive operations and gives officers a clear test: produce the person before the panel, or the detention is unlawful.

Illegal detention cannot become standard operating procedure at the whim of a law enforcer or politician, especially when security force criminality has been central to Bangladesh's human rights record. The forces have not been reformed enough to assume abuse will not recur. Custodial deaths, for example, continue.

After comparable periods of abuse, Nepal and Sri Lanka brought security forces within their human rights commissions' jurisdiction. There is no principled justification for allowing a force to investigate itself. We would reject that arrangement anywhere else.

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