A legal party, an illegal meeting?

On September 26, a legal political party held a meeting at its own office in Gulistan. By the end of the day, its headquarters had been stormed and hundreds of people had been taken into police custody. That requires some explaining.

Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (Jasad) says the gathering was a scheduled meeting of representatives from across the country and that the authorities had been informed beforehand. Police tell a different story. They say they received information that members of the Awami League, whose political activities are suspended, had gathered inside, possibly to plan sabotage or pursue some other “malicious purpose”.

But before the police moved in, BNP and Jubo Dal activists had already surrounded the building and entered the premises. Then came the police. Hundreds were detained. Of them, 249 were subsequently released after police verified that they were Jasad leaders and activists. Twenty-seven were ultimately sent to jail under Section 54 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

The police application said they had created an “unstable and disorderly situation” by chanting “Joy Bangla” and had failed to give satisfactory answers about why they were there. Their bail applications were subsequently rejected.

Now, the first question is…is Jasad banned?

The government and parliament have provided a legal basis for prohibiting the political activities of the Awami League. Parliament in April ratified the Anti-Terrorism amendment that underpins that prohibition, and the government has repeatedly said Awami League programmes cannot be conducted under another banner while the restriction remains.

But Jasad is not the Awami League and that distinction is not just pedantry rather it is the entire point of having laws.

If the authorities possess evidence that a Jasad meeting was actually being used as camouflage for a prohibited Awami League programme, that evidence can be investigated and, where the law permits, prosecuted. If individuals were planning sabotage, they can be charged with the relevant offence. 

A legal system is perfectly capable of distinguishing between affiliation, conduct and suspicion. What it cannot safely do is replace those distinctions with political smell. Otherwise an extraordinary principle emerges…a legal political organisation may hold a meeting only until somebody outside announces that the wrong people are inside.

The second question is still stranger. When did “Joy Bangla” become a criminal offence? The slogan has an intensely political history and, in contemporary Bangladesh, an association with the Awami League. The Supreme Court in December 2024 stayed the High Court judgment that had declared it Bangladesh’s national slogan. It therefore ceased to enjoy that official status.

But losing the status of a national slogan is not the same thing as becoming an illegal slogan. A republic ought to be able to understand the difference.

A slogan can be partisan, provocative, unfashionable, historically burdened or deeply irritating without becoming criminal. Article 39 of the Constitution protects freedom of speech subject to specified lawful restrictions. Articles 37 and 38 separately protect peaceful assembly and association, again subject to restrictions imposed by law.

So if chanting “Joy Bangla” constituted evidence of some other alleged offence in this particular case, the authorities should explain what that offence was and how the evidence connects the accused to it. The phrase itself cannot perform all the work.

This is where the Gulistan episode differs from the conventional story of a ‘mob’ attack.

A mob attacks because it claims authority it does not possess. The police exist precisely because they possess authority that the mob does not. The dangerous moment arrives when those roles become difficult to distinguish.

Ain o Salish Kendra said television footage appeared to show senior Jubo Dal figures creating a mob and making provocative statements. It called for an impartial investigation into the attack, assault and detention of 289 people, stressing that peaceful organisational activity by a political party should be respected unless that party has been prohibited by law.

That leads to a third question…in what capacity was Dhaka South Jubo Dal member secretary Rabiul Islam Nayan operating at the scene? Bdnews24 reported that Nayan was present and alleged that Awami League leaders and activists were holding a “secret meeting” inside the Jasad office. Jasad denied it.

Nayan is a political leader. He is not, as far as the publicly reported facts establish, an investigating officer. 

There is nothing improper about a citizen or politician informing police about a suspected crime. But once information has been supplied, the distinction between informer and investigator ought to become very bright indeed. Who authorised Nayan or other party activists to remain involved at the scene? 

What instructions, if any, did they give the police? Did police act independently on intelligence already in their possession, or did political activists effectively identify the alleged suspects for them? These are questions…and they are precisely the questions an investigation should answer.

Bangladesh has seen where ambiguity over mob authority leads.

In February 2025, a crowd stormed the Sabyasachi Prokashona stall at the Ekushey Book Fair over the display of books by Taslima Nasrin. The publisher was taken to a police control room while protesters gathered outside; 124 prominent citizens later described the episode as an assault on freedom of expression.

In August 2025, the Jatiya Party headquarters in Kakrail was vandalised and partly torched after protesters gathered following the attack on Gono Odhikar Parishad leader Nurul Haque Nur. Police were present and eventually used tear gas, water cannon and blank fire to disperse the attackers.

Then came the far darker violence of December 2025. Mobs attacked and set fire to the offices of The Daily Star and Prothom Alo, as well as Chhayanaut; Udichi’s central office was attacked the following evening. A later Daily Star-Dismislab analysis of 3,064 Facebook posts found that threats and incitement had circulated before the attacks and escalated into calls for violence at specific locations. 

UN human-rights experts subsequently cited the attacks as part of a broader pattern of mob violence against media and cultural organisations. Those episodes involved ‘mob’s substituting themselves for institutions. But Gulistan raises the more delicate problem of what happens when the crowd and the institution occupy the same scene.

There may indeed have been Awami League activists inside the Jasad office. There may have been people there with purposes unrelated to Jasad’s meeting. Police are entitled — and obliged — to investigate credible information about offences. The release of 249 detainees after identity verification, however, demonstrates why suspicion and guilt cannot be treated as synonyms.

The issue is therefore not whether one likes Jasad. Nor is it whether one approves of “Joy Bangla”. If Jasad is legal, it has the rights of a legal political party. If its members commit offences, prosecute the offences. If banned political activity was conducted from its premises, establish it with evidence. If somebody chants an unpopular slogan, identify the law supposedly violated before putting him in a prison van.

And if ruling-party activists arrive outside an opposition political office claiming criminals are inside, the police should listen to the allegation, thank them for the information — and then ask them to step aside.

Otherwise Bangladesh risks developing a curious new division of labour…politicians make the accusation, the crowd supplies the verdict and the police provide the handcuffs. That is not quite ‘mob rule.’ It is considerably more worrying.

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Faisal Mahmud is the Managing Editor of Daily Waadaa