Stepping into the sunlight was supposed to mean freedom for the survivors of secret detention. Instead, release has often meant another kind of captivity: arrest warrants, convictions, and court cases filed while they were held incommunicado.
Years lost to disappearance and imprisonment have fractured lives.
Many now spend what little they have on lawyers and distant court hearings, while compensation remains elusive.
Some have stopped speaking to the media, convinced justice will never come.
Three cases involving enforced disappearance are currently under trial at the International Crimes Tribunal, while its investigation agency is probing several others.
According to the prosecution, at least 14 detainees were held and tortured at the Rapid Action Battalion’s (RAB) Taskforce for Interrogation (TFI) cell between 2016 and 2024.
Allegations of state-sponsored enforced disappearances were widespread during the 15-year tenure of deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who, along with former security officials, is accused in most of the cases.
The Daily Star has interviewed several victims and their families ahead of the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances today.
All these incidents were documented by and detailed in the report of Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances.
One of them, Mikel Chakma, said he lives in what he calls his “second Aynaghor” even after two years of his release.
“I am living in isolation, in hiding, away from my family because I can be arrested any time,” said Mikel, who faces 10 arrest warrants and two convictions.
A youth leader of the United People’s Democratic Front (UPDF), Mikel was abducted on April 9, 2019, while travelling from Narayanganj to Dhaka.
His family believed he was dead. But he said he had spent more than five years inside the Joint Interrogation Cell (JIC).
On August 7, 2024, two days after Hasina’s ouster, a blindfolded Mikel was found in a teak forest beside the Chattogram-Khagrachhari highway.
But his release did not end his legal ordeal.
Eight cases had been filed against him in Rangamati and Chattogram, dating back to 2007, 2011, and 2018.
He was convicted in two: the first in “absentia” in 2023 while he was in secret detention and the second in October 2025 during the interim government’s tenure after his release.
Police also submitted charge sheets in two other cases in 2020, while he was still inside the JIC.
He alleged that the cases resulting in his convictions were fabricated and that he had been forcibly disappeared previously for a week before those cases were filed.
“They date back to 2007. They beat me senseless and electrocuted my earlobes. Then I was taken to the middle of Kaptai Lake, and the nozzle of a gun was pushed into my mouth.
“When I was handed over to the Longadu police station after a week, I was charged with possession of the same gun that was used to threaten me,” he said.
Ten months before his second conviction, he lodged a complaint with the International Crimes Tribunal, seeking justice and compensation.
“Now I know that even after pushing me to the brink of death for five years, their anger against me has not waned. I will not get justice from this state,” he said.
For Shariful Islam, the circumstances of his disappearance remain unresolved as he sits on death row at Kashimpur Jail while his family is fighting seven cases lodged against him.
His brother Ariful told The Daily Star that Shariful had travelled to India on a tourist visa in March-April 2016, but communication stopped within days.
For nearly three years, the family feared he had been killed in “crossfire”, while the law enforcement repeatedly detained and interrogated relatives about his whereabouts even as courts pursued murder charges against him in absentia.
The RAB announced his arrest in Nachole, Chapainawabganj, in January 2019.
But Shariful told his family that he had been detained in India in May 2016, handed over to Bangladeshi intelligence and secretly held for 32 months before his arrest was staged.
“They did not even take him to Nachole. He was in Dhaka the whole time,” his brother Ariful said, recalling the family’s meeting with Shariful in jail.
Only after entering prison did Shariful learn that courts had already tried him in absentia, sentenced him to death for the murder of Rajshahi University Prof Rezaul Karim Siddique and indicted him in the Holey Artisan attack.
“All of this happened while he was in illegal custody,” Ariful said.
“He was already a victim of enforced disappearance. Why should he also bear the burden of an injustice arising from it?” he questioned.
For Sheikh Ahmed Mamun, freedom carried a stigma that followed him home.
A student of Leading University in Sylhet, Mamun said he was abducted on November 15, 2021, and forcibly disappeared for nearly two years before being formally arrested on August 9, 2023, in a case of staged “surrender”.
“Even though those dark days are behind me, how people treat me in society is heartbreaking. My sister’s marriage was stalled because of the militant stigma attached to my name,” Mamun said.
He eventually left his home and sought a fresh start in Kishoreganj.
“Because of the prolonged disappearance and prison time, I was never able to graduate. My father holds a modest job, and I am the eldest son with six siblings.”
His ordeal has also imposed a continuing financial burden. He has to travel to Rangamati for court appearances, with each trip costing Tk 6,000-7,000.
“This is an expense I simply cannot afford. With the madrasa salary I can neither support myself nor help my family,” he said.
Others have faced financial ruin.
Ismail Hossain, 27, said he was abducted from Cumilla by men identifying themselves as RAB personnel in September 2022.
According to him, he was driven through Bandarban and Chattogram blindfolded and secretly held for nearly two months.
On November 4, 2022, he was produced before the media in Dhaka alongside four others and sent to jail.
Ismail said he learned in prison that he had also been implicated in a case in Rangamati, a district he said he had never visited.
Although he later secured bail, two years behind bars and the ensuing legal battles cost his family up to Tk 15 lakh, pushing them into financial ruin.
The ordeal left his parents traumatised. His father died shortly after his release on bail, while his mother remains in frail health.
Ismail is now demanding compensation from the state.
Madrasa teacher Maulana Hossain Ahmad said he was abducted in Naogaon by plainclothesmen that same month and held incommunicado for 21 days.
His captivity ended with formal arrest in two criminal cases filed in Narayanganj and Rangamati. He spent another 21 months in prison before securing bail in June 2024.
Now back home in Patuakhali, Ahmad remains tied to the Rangamati case and must make costly journeys for court hearings.
He said media reports published around the time of his arrest have also left a lasting mark.
“Everyone around me thinks I am a militant,” Ahmad said.
BNP lawmaker Sanjida Islam Tulee, lead coordinator of Mayer Daak, a platform for victims of enforced disappearance, said the government has plans to provide compensation and is vetting a list of affected individuals and their families.
“We are demanding that at the very least families of missing victims be able to get an official certificate that declares that their loved one is a victim so that they can access their assets. The children are not being able to access the fathers’ money,” said Tulee.
Parliament is considering a bill on enforced disappearances that would establish a legal framework for compensation and allow families to obtain enforced disappearance certificates from appropriate courts.
Such certificates would allow families to access the assets of missing relatives, according to the bill.
The bill proposes compensation of up to Tk 1 crore for victims of enforced disappearance. The money will come from fines imposed on convicts, with the state covering any shortfall if the fines cannot be collected.
But for victims and their families, legal recognition has yet to translate into justice.
Tulee said Mayer Daak handed over case files of all the victims in its network to the International Crimes Tribunal a year and a half ago, but no verdict has been delivered yet.
“When will our wait end?” she asked.
[Zyma Islam and our correspondents in Sylhet, Rajshahi, Cumilla and Patuakhali contributed to this report]
