In Cumilla, a murder exposes army’s contempt for rules

Only six days had passed since the family of Touhidul Islam, an activist with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, had buried his elderly father at the family graveyard in Cumilla. Friday was meant to be a day of remembrance — a solemn gathering to honour the late patriarch’s memory. Instead, by midday on January 31st, the family was holding a second funeral — this time for Touhidul himself.

A 40-year-old father of four daughters — his eldest just fourteen — Touhidul had travelled from Chattogram, where he worked at a shipping company, to oversee his father’s burial. That evening, still grieving one loss, he went to bed, unaware his own life was about to be cut short. Sometime after midnight, soldiers from the Bangladesh Army arrived at the family home, rousing the household from their sleep.

“We were asleep,” recalled his elder sister, Shahinur Akter Meena. “Suddenly, there was loud banging at the door, and about seven or eight men in army uniforms, along with two in plainclothes, stormed in. They pulled off our blankets and yanked the covers from the girls’ beds. We told them, ‘Our daughters are inside; you cannot enter like this.’ But they did not listen. There were no female officers — only men.”

Family members recall that the soldiers entered without a warrant, ostensibly searching for a weapon they insist did not exist. Meena said the soldiers’ faces were mostly covered — “Only their eyes and foreheads were visible” — and no one offered identification or showed paperwork. The troops confiscated the family’s phones, then blindfolded Touhidul and dragged him away.

“We trust you. Please don’t harm him,” his widow, Yasmin Nahar, remembers pleading. A soldier responded, she said, by telling her, “We will return him just as we are taking him.”

That assurance was not to be kept. 

Accounts by more than a dozen witnesses described the night of terror. As the soldiers swept through the village, they beat random local residents indiscriminately with sticks and batons. Touhidul was one of at least three men detained on mere suspicion and transferred, blindfolded, in a makeshift holding site on the outskirts of Cumilla. There, they were beaten relentlessly. By morning, the local police received an anonymous tip about a body left by a river bank. It was Touhidul Islam.

The army’s actions that night amounted to a litany of grave violations, including custodial torture leading to death, unlawful arrest and detention tantamount to enforced disappearance, and breaches of multiple provisions of the country’s criminal procedure, according to two of Bangladesh’s most prominent legal experts. Yet the only consequence was the suspension of a single officer — a response the experts dismissed as a mere slap on the wrist.

Traditionally responsible for national defence, the army has recently been granted sweeping judicial powers under the Muhammad Yunus administration, following the toppling of longtime authoritarian leader Sheikh Hasina — an upheaval that left the overstretched police force struggling to maintain control after participating in the brutal suppression of the protests that culminated in her fall.

Since assuming both civilian law enforcement and magisterial authority, the army has been linked to at least nine deaths in similar “joint forces drives” nationwide, according to Ain o Salish Kendra, a domestic rights organisation. The figure aligns with a tally compiled by Netra News from media reports. 

Official statements attribute these deaths to “stroke” or “gunfights” — a familiar refrain under Hasina’s rule, one that the interim government has routinely condemned. But grieving families and eyewitnesses tell a different story. They describe raids carried out with little regard for due process — methods that, legal experts say, even the beleaguered police had traditionally avoided.

Neither the Bangladesh Army nor the Chief Adviser’s Office responded to Netra News’ detailed questions sent via email.

Extraordinary powers in untrained hands

Shahdeen Malik, one of Bangladesh’s foremost constitutional lawyers, believes the army’s aggressive conduct stems from the astonishing authority it now wields. 

Under standard legal practice, the police — traditionally responsible for law enforcement — are obliged to obtain judicial warrants for most searches or arrests. Yet, since army commanders can act as magistrates, it is unclear whether they require any warrant at all. “This effectively removes the separation of powers between the judiciary and the executive,” Malik told Netra News.

In normal circumstances, he explained, a magistrate is distinct from the police and holds judicial powers only within a specific jurisdiction. In contrast, Malik said, “The entire army has been handed magisterial powers with no territorial limitation.”

Layered on top of that is the military’s longstanding culture of secrecy and opacity.

Malik pointed out that, ordinarily, magistrates are appointed through an official gazette. “In this case, there is no public record. The army has been granted blanket authority,” he said. “We do not even know who holds this power. What are their names? Who are they accountable to?”

The result, he argued, is a consolidation of authority so sweeping that even police and magistrates combined had not previously possessed it. And this extraordinary power now rests with a military unaccustomed to respect civilian authority that bestowed it the power in the first place.

Jyotirmoy Barua, one of the country’s most prominent human rights lawyers, said the source of the army’s powers is the nation’s colonial-era Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), one that the army is neither trained nor known to abide by.

“Why are they entering people’s homes with their faces covered?” Barua asked, referring to accounts from Meena, Touhidul’s sister. “Under the CrPC, they must reveal their identity: ‘My name is this, I am from this division, and I am an officer in this corps of the Bangladesh Army. I have been granted magisterial powers, and I am here because there is an allegation related to this offence.’”

“If they enter private property, they must have a search warrant and present it. That is a constitutional obligation,” he added, citing Article 43, which bars unlawful search and seizure. “The army is bound by the constitution; they are not above the law. They cannot act on presumption, nor can they disregard due process.”

He also pointed to Section 52 of the CrPC, which stipulates that a female suspect be searched only by a female officer — a requirement ignored that night.

Barua further questioned why the entire family’s phones were confiscated when the alleged offence involved only Touhidul’s supposed possession of an illegal weapon. 

A succession of abuses

Beyond the apparent lack of due process, a far graver question concerns the death of Touhidul Islam and the circumstances leading to it.

When Netra News reporters reached Touhidul’s home in Cumilla, local residents were vocal, repeating one refrain: that he was killed in cold blood. Posters lining the eight-kilometre road from town demanded justice, proclaiming, “Touhidul was tortured… Justice for Touhidul’s murder.”

Netra News spoke with Abu Taher, a 30-year-old cousin of Touhid, who said he was also tortured that evening. According to him, he had gone out late to buy groceries for the next day’s prayer gathering, marking the passing of Touhidul’s father. Soldiers stopped him on his way home; they allegedly beat him on the spot, leaving him with wounds across his back, chest, and legs.

​​Six days later, when Netra News interviewed him, Taher still struggled to sit upright. “I cannot sleep properly,” he said. “If my body touches the bed the wrong way, the pain shoots through me.” 

Residents corroborated his account, describing how the army patrol indiscriminately struck men on the streets with batons while using abusive local Bengali slang.

For Barua, such unbridled violence is blatantly unlawful. “The constitution prohibits torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment — even for suspects,” he said. “And beating random bystanders is a flagrant abuse of power.” He noted that Bangladesh’s anti-torture law explicitly recognises mental suffering as a form of torture. “By using abusive language to intimidate, they committed a criminal offence,” he said.

Netra News traced Lutfor Rahman, 42, another neighbour of Touhidul, who said he too was detained that night, this time on suspicion of drug peddling. Neighbours rejected the allegation as baseless. Lutfor recounted being taken to a small roadside retreat near the Gomati River on the outskirts of Cumilla, four kilometres from his home. 

There, he encountered Touhidul.

“When I arrived, Touhidul was already there,” Lutfor recalled. “They had blindfolded me, I was still in the car but I could hear him screaming, pleading: ‘I have not done anything, please do not beat me.’ It went on for an hour or two.” 

An hour later, Lutfor’s blindfold was removed.

“Touhidul was badly hurt, barely able to stand. They beat him with sticks and kicked him with their boots. Then they forced us to say the fajr prayer, making him lead as the imam when he could hardly remain on his feet. I had to drag and carry him for wudu,” he said, referring to the Islamic ritual to cleanse body before prayers.

Lutfor said he met another detained man he could not identify, and multiple locals corroborated the claim. Netra News was unable to locate and interview the individual.

Barua argued that taking detainees to a remote retreat instead of a legitimate detention centre or even a police station constituted illegal secret detention, specifically barred under laws.

He pointed out that an army camp, cantonment, or police station were all closer to the scene. “Why move him to an abandoned place if they were following protocol? Even known criminals have constitutional protection, but in a secret detention, there are no witnesses, no safeguards,” he said. “Blindfolding suggests enforced disappearance tactics — denying a detainee and their family knowledge of their whereabouts.”

When Netra News visited the site days later, reporters observed fresh boot prints and tyre tracks at the spot Lutfor identified. 

Three workers at a nearby plant nursery said they had seen four military vehicles arrive that evening. They were told to leave and return an hour later.

Lutfor said that, sometime after the fajr prayer, the army took him elsewhere, leaving Touhidul behind. That was the last time Lutfor saw him alive. 

Around 11:00 a.m., Kotwali Police Station was informed that an injured man — later identified as Touhidul — had been found in Jhakunipara, by the Gomati River.

“Our officers rushed him to Cumilla Medical College Hospital, but he was pronounced dead on arrival,” said Mohinul Islam, officer-in-charge at the station. Islam also said he had not even been notified of — let alone, partaken in — any army-led operation in the area that night, even though it was purportedly a joint raid.

Given the abundance of witness statements and physical evidence, Barua believes the case clearly indicates a custodial death. “He was in the army’s custody, so it is a custodial killing. Every individual involved — from the initial arrest to the final torture — should face legal action in a civilian court,” he said. “This is a criminal, not a military, matter.”

While Bangladeshi law requires a judicial investigation into such deaths, no inquiry has taken place. Instead, an army press release disclosed only the suspension of a single officer, pending an internal probe. 

Barua emphasised the inadequacy of such a response. “This was a civilian operation under magistracy powers, ending in a custodial death. The entire chain of command must be held to account under the Torture and Custodial Death (Prevention) Act, 2013.”

Malik, the constitutional lawyer, concurred with the assessment. “Professional misconduct may be handled administratively, but taking a life is a crime,” he said. “There is no ambiguity here: an army officer accused of such an offence must face trial in a civilian court.”

In September, soldiers allegedly tortured two men, leading to their deaths in northern Gaibandha district. Netra News reported that a criminal complaint was filed with a local court four months later against some army soldiers, among others. But if history is any guide, accountability through the courts has few precedents, if at all.

The last instance of the army wielding similarly sweeping authority under a civilian administration was Operation Clean Heart in 2002. Over 84 days, thousands were detained, and at least 57 died in custody, according to media reports. On the eve of the military’s withdrawal from the streets, the government enacted the Joint Drive Indemnity Act 2003, effectively shielding the security forces from legal action.

The law says “if anyone died, was injured, or suffered property damage due to the joint forces’ operations between October 2002 and January 2003, no case could be filed in any court,” Malik said, cautioning that, “History should not be allowed to repeat itself.”

Back in Cumilla, Touhidul’s widow remains inconsolable. 

“He was not a criminal. He was not armed. He was just my husband, our daughters’ father — and they killed him.” Echoing the posters haunting the town, she added, “All I want is justice.”●