Police take centre stage as Bangladesh revises enforced disappearance draft

Dhaka, July 30: The new draft law on enforced disappearance marks a clear shift from the earlier framework, but the most consequential change is not the harsher punishment. It is the decision to move investigation away from the National Human Rights Commission and place it with the police. That change may make the draft more familiar to criminal procedure, but it also makes it more politically sensitive and, for many rights groups, less trustworthy. 1) The crime is kept severe The draft keeps enforced disappearance as a separate and continuing crime, which means the offence does not end simply because the victim has not yet been found. It also preserves the death penalty and life imprisonment for the gravest cases, especially where the disappearance ends in death. That makes the draft one of the strongest punitive frameworks Bangladesh has tried to build around this offence. 2) Liability goes beyond the direct actor The draft does not stop at the person who physically arrests or abducts someone. It extends liability to those who aid, abet, conspire, conceal, or otherwise participate in the disappearance. It also introduces command responsibility, which is important because enforced disappearance is often not a lone act but a chain of orders, silence and cover-up. 3) Families get a more direct route The draft appears to give victims’ families a more practical route to file complaints, especially if the police refuse to take them. In that situation, a representative can go directly to the magistrate, which is a meaningful procedural safeguard. This matters because disappearance cases often stall at the first counter, long before any real investigation begins. 4) The NHRC has been pushed aside This is the biggest change. Under the earlier ordinance, the NHRC had been given a central role in receiving or pursuing disappearance complaints. The new draft removes that role and shifts the job to the police, with the Home Ministry arguing that criminal investigations belong to the police under the CrPC. That is the official legal justification, but it is also the exact point that has drawn criticism from rights groups. 5) Why the shift matters On paper, the police are the natural agency for criminal investigation. But enforced disappearance is not an ordinary offence; it is a crime that often involves state force, state secrecy or state tolerance. That creates a serious trust problem if the same system accused of abuse is also the first and main investigator. 6) Why the BNP government is wary of the NHRC The BNP government’s discomfort with the NHRC seems to come from both politics and institution-building. On one side, the government appears to believe the NHRC is too weak, too bureaucratic, and too dependent on executive goodwill to handle high-stakes disappearance cases effectively. On the other side, the NHRC can become a rival source of authority if it is allowed to investigate state-linked abuses independently. 7) The deeper distrust There is also a broader reform backlash at work. Human-rights groups and TIB have argued that the BNP’s wider ordinance review process is rolling back independent oversight institutions rather than strengthening them. In that environment, removing the NHRC from disappearance investigations does not look like a neutral technical correction; it looks like a decision to keep the chain of control inside the executive and law-enforcement structure. 8) The weakness in the police model The problem is that the police are not automatically more trusted than the NHRC in a disappearance case. In fact, in cases involving allegations against security agencies, police-led investigation can deepen public skepticism unless there are strong external checks. So the draft solves one problem — institutional ambiguity — by creating another, which is credibility. 9) What changed from earlier versions Earlier versions were built around a more rights-centred model, with the NHRC playing a more visible role and special tribunal logic more prominent. The new draft is more prosecutorial, more police-centered, and more tightly wired into ordinary criminal process. It is also more explicit about punishment and chain-of-command liability, which gives it a harder edge. 10) The real political test The draft’s success will depend less on how severe the penalty is and more on whether victims believe the process is independent. If the police investigate cases involving state actors without strong oversight, the law may be legally neat but publicly brittle. That is why the NHRC question is not a side issue — it is the core legitimacy question inside the draft. The draft is weak as a trust-building reform. The government seems to want an enforceable statute; critics want an independent system. At the moment, the draft is leaning toward the first and away from the second.