Gum, grief and govt’s glaring failure over enforced disappearance

Somewhere in Bangladesh tonight, a mother is still setting a plate for a son who has not eaten at her table in fourteen years. She does not know whether he is alive or where his remains might be. She only knows he left home one day and never returned, while the state offered nothing but silence. Multiply her by 251, and you begin to understand the wound Bangladesh calls "gum", disappearance.

The Number of Disappearances
More than one and a half thousand people were disappeared under Awami League rule, the Commission found. Victims, it says, met one of roughly four fates: killed and their bodies made to vanish; falsely shown as arrested under anti-terrorism law; pushed across the border into India to be arrested there; or shown as arrested under a handful of minor cases.

According to source, among the complaints before the tribunal, ‘Mayer Daak’ has filed on behalf of 150 people, Gum Paribar 60 and BNP, together with individuals including current Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed and BNP leader Ilias Ali, more than 300 in total. Investigators are working to consolidate 251 verified incidents into a single formal charge, though they still cannot confirm how many of the 251 are alive or dead.

Chief Prosecutor Md. Aminul Islam however, has told the media that allegations before the tribunal have already crossed 500, 110 from Mayer Daak alone, with the Gum Foundation holding roughly 200 to 250 more, besides individual complaints filed separately.

The Interim Government's Failure
When the Commission of Inquiry was formed in 2024, 1,913 complaints reached it. After discarding 113, some 1,569 were verified as genuine disappearances. Of these, 1,282 people eventually returned from unlawful detention. Thirty six bodies were recovered, found in rivers or riddled with bullets. The remaining 251 have never returned. Some have now been missing for ten years, some twelve, some fourteen.

Nur Khan Liton, a former Commission member and human rights worker, said, "1,569 people were subjected to enforced disappearance. Each was taken away by members of various law enforcement agencies. Of them, 251 have still not returned, even their final fate remains unknown. But the government and human rights organisations still have the opportunity to work on behalf of the missing. If everyone tries together, the final fate of the disappeared can be revealed to the world."

Aminul Islam said that after the uprising, there had been hope the tribunal would move swiftly. Mayer Daak submitted twelve years of records covering roughly 150 cases, yet in the interim government's fifteen months, they saw no investigation. Mayer Daak's coordinator and reserved seat MP Sanjida Islam Tuli has alleged that only select cases were given priority.

Three Cases Before the Tribunal 
Only three disappearance cases are currently on trial. In one, former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina stands accused with sixteen others over detentions at RAB's TFI Cell. Ten of the accused are held at a Dhaka Cantonment sub jail, while seven remain fugitives. A second concerns the Joint Interrogation Cell run by the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence, where of thirteen accused, Hasina again among them, only three have been arrested. The third is a crimes against humanity case against retired Major General Ziaul Ahsan over the disappearance and killing of over a hundred people.

Is Ziaul Ahsan the Mastermind?
Formal charges against retired Major General Ziaul Ahsan were framed on 14 January. Trial began on 8 February, with former army chief General Iqbal Karim Bhuiyan as the first witness. Prosecutors say they have found direct evidence linking Sheikh Hasina, Ziaul Ahsan and senior officials to the 2015 abduction and trafficking of Salahuddin Ahmed into India.

A witness testifying in the Ilias Ali case said he had worked as a "runner" under Ziaul Ahsan for about a year and three months, and witnessed him kill people brought from the TFI Cell in various ways, including shootings and injections. Beyond previously described incidents, another ten to twelve were killed by injection, sometimes inside the cell, sometimes in moving vehicles. At one point, the witness broke down in tears.

A retired brigadier general testified about a Sundarbans operation. A blindfolded man with bound hands was taken to a boat's edge, a heavy sack tied to his body, shot and immediately stabbed by another man before being thrown into the water.

How the Prosecution Is Proceeding
The chief prosecutor said law enforcement members carried out these disappearances and deliberately destroyed evidence, slowing investigation, though families are being met regularly to gather complaints and evidence.

Aminul Islam described a repeated pattern. "Everyone's abduction system or pattern was the same, picked up from the street, taken from home, blindfolded, moved by microbus, sometimes in plain clothes, sometimes in uniform, and afterward, keeping their whereabouts hidden and denying it. This was the common pattern of these disappearances."