Prisons Running at 2.4 Times Capacity, Odhikar says in Quarterly Human Rights Report

Bangladesh's prisons were running at about 2.4 times their capacity in the third quarter, the rights group Odhikar said in its report published on 31 October. It said 105,102 prisoners were held in 75 prisons on 13 September, against a combined capacity of 43,157. The report calls this the highest level in five years and links it to arrests of banned Awami League members and others accused in various cases.

Thirty inmates died in custody from July to September, 22 of them in September. One death was alleged to be from torture, and 29 were attributed to illness. Odhikar says only two permanent doctors serve all prisons, and prison vans have no toilets, with prisoners sometimes held for seven to eight hours. It also says sick prisoners are still handcuffed, despite a 2018 High Court ruling.

Odhikar criticised three laws the BNP government passed despite opposition walkouts. The disappearance law allows the government to assign probes of a force to another force or to an inter-agency team. It also allows up to five years' jail for complainants whose cases a court finds false. Odhikar says the human rights commission law falls short of the Paris Principles, because Section 19 bars the commission from investigating security forces on its own initiative. The Special Response Battalion Act transfers the Rapid Action Battalion's (RAB) personnel, assets and legal immunities to a new unit, which Odhikar calls "RAB under a different name".

The report records two enforced disappearances under the current government. One is Miraj Sheikh of Bagerhat, taken on 10 April, whose whereabouts remain unknown. Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed has said he was not forcibly disappeared. The other is businessman Shamim Khan, picked up in Dhaka on 26 August and released on bail on 26 September. Police also described two custody deaths as suicides.

People were arrested under the Anti-Terrorism Act or the Cyber Security Act over Facebook posts criticising Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, several of them about electricity bills. A draft Cyber Security (Amendment) Act proposes up to 10 years' jail or a Tk 4 million fine for offences such as misinformation, and would make some national-security offences non-bailable. Odhikar recorded 22 journalists injured, 13 assaulted and 16 threatened in the quarter, with BNP-linked activists, police and officials among those accused.

At least 27 people were killed and 1,090 injured. The report records 45 BNP internal clashes, which left four dead and 480 injured. It also describes attacks on opposition rallies, campus clashes between the BNP's student wing and Islami Chhatra Shibir, and Awami League crude-bomb attacks. A BNP MP resigned over the attack on a Dhaka health centre, and 19 BNP-linked people were arrested.

Lower courts handed down 85 death sentences. One man was held in a condemned cell for about two months in a case of mistaken identity before being released on bail. Odhikar counted 22 public lynching deaths and 223 rape victims, 150 of them girls. It also recorded 26 victims of dowry-related violence. It reports factory closures from the energy crisis, unpaid wages, a fire at a Pretty Group factory in Ashulia that killed seven, and a gas leak at a Sitakunda shipbreaking yard that killed nine.

The report says Indian border guards killed four Bangladeshis and injured six, and pushed 29 Bengali-speaking people into Bangladesh.

Odhikar urges the government to give an independent commission the power to investigate disappearances, and to amend the commission law to meet the Paris Principles. It also calls for repeal of the Anti-Terrorism Act and the Special Powers Act, and for prison reforms with more doctors and hospital beds.