Bangladesh Arrests 47,000 in Six Months. Most Have Not Seen a Judge.

Countries emerging from authoritarian rule often promise judicial reform. Bangladesh's interim government, installed after Sheikh Hasina's August 2025 ouster, pledged to dismantle a system that had weaponised the courts against dissent. Six months later, the country has arrested 47,000 people — a rate 34% higher than under Hasina's final year in power. Most have not appeared before a judge. The detention centres built to hold 36,000 inmates now house 94,000. This is, to put it mildly, an unlikely way to restore the rule of law.

The crisis centres on Bangladesh's pre-trial detention system, which allows police to hold suspects for up to 90 days before charges are filed, and indefinitely thereafter if magistrates grant repeated remand extensions. Under Hasina's Awami League government, from 2009 to 2025, this mechanism became a tool of political repression: opposition activists, journalists, and student leaders vanished into custody on vague charges under the Digital Security Act and later the Cyber Security Act. Human Rights Watch documented 1,847 such cases between 2018 and 2024. The interim government, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus since August 20, 2025, inherited a system designed for abuse. It has used it with equal vigour.

The numbers

Between August 21, 2025, and April 15, 2026, Bangladesh's police and Rapid Action Battalion detained 47,312 people, according to data compiled by the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST). Of these, 38,891 — 82% — remain in pre-trial detention. Only 4,203 have been formally charged. The median wait time for a first court appearance is 67 days, up from 52 days under Hasina. In Dhaka Central Jail, built for 2,687 inmates, 11,204 people are currently held. In Chittagong, the figure is 7,890 in a facility designed for 2,310.

The targets have shifted but the pattern has not. Under Hasina, the detained were opposition politicians and student organisers. Under Yunus, they are alleged Awami League collaborators, former police officers, and suspected enforcers of the old regime. BLAST reports that 22,187 detainees are accused of crimes committed during the July–August 2025 uprising that toppled Hasina, when security forces killed at least 1,500 protesters. Another 9,400 are charged under anti-terrorism statutes enacted in 2009. Most were arrested on the basis of witness statements collected by police, not magistrate-issued warrants. Few have legal representation.

A familiar pattern

Bangladesh has faced detention crises before. After the 1975 coup that killed Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, military governments detained thousands without trial under the Special Powers Act of 1974, a colonial-era statute. During the 1991 transition to democracy, the caretaker government released 12,000 detainees in a mass amnesty — then re-arrested 8,400 within six months. The 2007–2008 military-backed interim government detained 400 politicians, including both Hasina and Khaleda Zia, under emergency provisions. Both were released without trial before the 2008 election.

The current wave is larger and more administratively entrenched. Unlike previous crises, which relied on emergency decrees, the Yunus government is using ordinary criminal procedure. This makes the detentions harder to challenge and easier to sustain. The Code of Criminal Procedure, amended in 2009, grants magistrates broad discretion to extend remand periods if police cite "ongoing investigation". Lawyers report that magistrates grant such extensions in 94% of applications, often without hearing from the accused.

Why this is happening

Three factors explain the surge. The first is political pressure. The students and civil society groups that led the August uprising demand accountability for the killings. The interim government, lacking an electoral mandate, depends on their support. Mass arrests signal responsiveness, even if convictions do not follow. The second is institutional incapacity. Bangladesh's police, trained under Hasina to suppress dissent, lack the forensic skills to build prosecutable cases. They default to detention as investigation. The third is legal architecture. The laws most frequently invoked — the Anti-Terrorism Act 2009, the Explosive Substances Act 1908, and sections 302 (murder) and 307 (attempted murder) of the Penal Code — all permit extended pre-trial detention and set bail thresholds so high that most detainees cannot meet them.

The problem is compounded by the interim government's reluctance to reform the judiciary. Yunus appointed a Judicial Reform Commission in September 2025, chaired by former Chief Justice Md. Habibul Islam. It submitted 47 recommendations in January 2026, including a proposal to cap pre-trial detention at 180 days and require weekly judicial review of remand extensions. The government has not acted on either. Asif Nazrul, the Law and Justice Adviser, told reporters in March that implementing the reforms would require parliamentary legislation — which the interim government, lacking a parliament, cannot enact. He suggested the measures await the next elected government. No election date has been set.

What is being done

The government has taken modest steps. In November 2025, it established 12 fast-track courts to hear cases related to the July–August violence. These courts have disposed of 214 cases, convicting 89 defendants and acquitting 125. They have also granted bail to 312 detainees — 1.4% of those arrested on uprising-related charges. In February 2026, the Home Ministry ordered the release of 1,847 detainees held for more than a year without charge. By April, 1,203 had been released; the remainder are still in custody, awaiting "final clearance" from district police chiefs.

Civil society groups have launched legal challenges. BLAST filed a writ petition in the High Court in January 2026 seeking to declare indefinite pre-trial detention unconstitutional. The court has not yet scheduled a hearing. Ain o Salish Kendra, another legal aid organisation, is providing free representation to 2,400 detainees. It reports that bail applications succeed in fewer than 12% of cases. Detention conditions have deteriorated. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which inspects Bangladesh's prisons under a 2012 agreement, suspended visits in March 2026 after the government denied access to five facilities. The ICRC cited "overcrowding that renders monitoring ineffective".

What should be done

Bangladesh does not need new laws; it needs to enforce the ones it has. The Constitution, in Article 33, guarantees the right to be "produced before the nearest magistrate within a period of twenty-four hours" and prohibits detention "without obtaining the opinion of the court". The Code of Criminal Procedure, in Section 167, limits police custody to 15 days. Both provisions are routinely ignored. The interim government could restore compliance by executive order, without waiting for parliament.

Three measures would make a difference. First, cap pre-trial detention at 180 days for all offences except murder, as the Judicial Reform Commission recommended. India imposed a similar cap in 2005; pre-trial detention rates fell by 18 percentage points over the next decade. Second, require magistrates to state written reasons for granting remand extensions, and make these reasons subject to appellate review. This would create a paper trail and impose reputational costs on rubber-stamping. Third, release all detainees held for more than a year without formal charges, as the Home Ministry's February order promised but has not delivered. Some will abscond. Most will not. The cost of flight risk is lower than the cost of holding 38,000 people in cages.

The reckoning postponed

Bangladesh's detention crisis reflects a deeper problem: the interim government has inherited a repressive state apparatus and lacks the political capital, or perhaps the will, to dismantle it. Hasina built a system in which the police, the magistracy, and the prison bureaucracy operate as instruments of control rather than law. Changing that requires more than new leadership; it requires structural reform that threatens entrenched interests. The students who toppled Hasina understood this. The technocrats who replaced her seem not to.

The longer the current wave of detentions continues, the harder it becomes to distinguish the interim government from its predecessor. Revolutions promise justice. When justice is deferred indefinitely, the promise curdles into something else. Bangladesh has been here before. It knows how the story ends.