Sheikh Hasina’s regime exploited Narayanganj ‘seven-murder’ case for political gain |
Few cases in Bangladesh’s modern history have been as politically charged or as cynically exploited as the Narayanganj Seven-Murder case. What began as a horrifying episode of abduction and killing in 2014 was soon transformed into a political theater—one that served the interests of the then Awami League regime under Sheikh Hasina and its local power brokers like Shamim Osman. Beneath the façade of justice, the case became a tool for political vindication, selective punishment, and systemic abuse of state power.
From the very beginning, the Hasina government used this case as a shield against mounting domestic and international allegations of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. The Narayanganj incident, horrific as it was, became a convenient spectacle to prove that the government could deliver justice—even as the same administration presided over years of impunity, police brutality, and suppression of dissent.
The truth, however, is far more sinister. Evidence that has since surfaced suggests that the case was politically manipulated from top to bottom—its investigation guided, its prosecution accelerated, and its verdict predetermined. Several officers of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) were framed, scapegoated at the altar of political convenience, and condemned under a farcical judicial process.
The politics of a “show trial”
When the bodies of the seven victims, including city councilor Nazrul Islam and lawyer Chandan Sarkar, were recovered from the Shitalakhya River, national outrage was inevitable. But instead of conducting an impartial investigation, the Hasina administration swiftly removed all local law enforcement personnel in Narayanganj. Their replacements were handpicked loyalists, ensuring total control over the narrative. Reports from that period reveal how the government installed a trusted police superintendent to direct the investigation —one later publicly praised by MP Shamim Osman, a man whose own name repeatedly surfaced in connection with local crime and political........