Bangladesh govt orders probe into BNP youth activist’s in-custody death

Touhidul Islam, 40, died at a Cumilla hospital early Saturday after being taken from his home by a security unit on Friday afternoon.
Kamran Reza Chowdhury
2025.02.01
Dhaka
Bangladesh govt orders probe into BNP youth activist’s in-custody death Bangladeshi military personnel stand guard at an empty police station in Dhaka, Aug. 9, 2024.
Luis Tato/AFP

Bangladesh’s interim government ordered an “urgent investigation” into the death of a BNP youth leader after a military unit allegedly picked him up and took him into custody.

The government, headed by Muhammad Yunus, made the announcement on Saturday, hours after Bangladesh Nationalist Party Secretary-General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir had demanded a probe into the suspicious death of Touhidul Islam, 40, a leader of BNP’s Jatiyatabadi Jubo Dal youth wing in Cumilla.

“The interim government has ordered an urgent investigation into the death,” Yunus’ press office said in a statement.

“Upholding human rights in every sphere of national life is a core mission of this government, which includes some of the top rights activists in the country,” it said.

The interim government is under immense pressure from the BNP to speed up the transition to elections. No date has been set. 

The commander of the joint military unit that apparently took Islam into custody has been relieved of his duties, pending an investigation, according to a statement from the Bangladeshi military and defense ministry’s Inter-Services Public Relations Directorate. 

Bruises were found on Islam’s body, a police official told BenarNews, denying that police had a role in taking him into custody. 

The military’s P.R. wing expressed sorrow for the “unwanted incident.”

“The persons found responsible in the investigation will face punishment according to the army laws,” the directorate said.

Yunus’ government is running the South Asian country during the transition to the next general election after it took over from the Awami League government of Sheikh Hasina, which fell last August during student-led protests against her administration.

Hasina’s government was accused of carrying out hundreds of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings during its 15 years of consecutive rule. 


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Touhidul Islam was allegedly picked up from his house in Cumilla by an army-led joint force at 3 p.m. on Friday. He was pronounced dead at a local medical college-hospital early Saturday, officials said.

Moinul Islam, officer-in-charge at the Cumilla Kotwali police station, told BenarNews on Saturday night that a joint-forces unit had called the station at around 11 p.m. Friday to ask police to take Touhidul Islam to the hospital. 

“No police personnel were in the joint forces. He was unconscious when we took him. At around 12:30 a.m., the doctors declared him dead,” he said.

“There were marks of apparent injury on both sides of his belly and hip. We have conducted a post-mortem and handed over the dead body,” the officer-in-charge said.

Mirza-Fakhrul-Islam-Alamgir.jpg
Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, secretary-general of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), talks to BenarNews during an interview at the party chief’s Gulshan office in Dhaka, Nov. 10, 2024. (Kamran Reza Chowdhury/BenarNews)

Earlier on Saturday, Alamgir, the BNP’s secretary-general, condemned the apparent in-custody death of the youth-wing activist.

“Such [an] extrajudicial killing is very unfortunate during the interim government supported by political parties participating in the democratic movement after the fall of the Awami fascist government in the students-led mass movement,” Alamgir said, according to the state-run Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) news service.

The report by BSS that quoted him suggested Touhidul Islam had been picked up by plain clothes law enforcement personnel. However, it remained unclear why he was taken into custody – whether it was by the military or police – in the first place.

“None can take the law into its own hands,” Alamgir said. “No matter how powerful the perpetrator of the crime is, bringing him under the law and giving exemplary punishment is one of the conditions of the rule of law.”

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