On 26 October, Inspector General of Police Md. Ali Hossain Fakir told an audience that, if the government so permits, police would resort to “crossfire” where necessary. The remark, made while the force was already under scrutiny for past practices of extrajudicial killing, was quickly clarified by Police Headquarters as a reference only to firm, lawful action rather than punishment outside the judicial process. The Bangladesh Police Service Association went further, endorsing the language as a “timely call.”
Within days, two men were dead in circumstances involving law-enforcement operations or alleged operations. On the evening of 27 October, factory worker Maruf alias Dukhu Mia was killed by gunfire during an SRB (formerly RAB) anti-narcotics raid in Dhalpur, Jatrabari. Officials said suspects had fired at them and attempted to snatch weapons; the force claimed it had responded only with warning shots into the air. The source of the fatal bullet remains unidentified.
On the early morning of 29 October, fisherman Aktar Hossain Howladar was killed by gunfire in Hijla, Barishal. Eyewitnesses accuse the naval police; the authorities deny that any operation of theirs was underway. In both cases, lives were taken and responsibility has not been established.
These incidents do not by themselves prove that the IGP’s words produced the deaths. What they illustrate is the opacity that follows when senior officers normalise a term long associated with extrajudicial killings by RAB, which was formed by the BNP in 2004, and when professional associations defend rather than constrain it. Rank-and-file personnel take cues about which excesses will receive institutional cover. When accountability is deferred or denied, the practical result is impunity.
The same pattern of denial appears in official claims about custodial and prison deaths. Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed has repeatedly stated that, under the present government, no extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, or deaths in custody have occurred. Human-rights monitoring tells a different story.
The Human Rights Support Society (HRSS), for the period January–September 2026, recorded 95 deaths in prison custody (40 of convicted prisoners and 55 of under-trial detainees) and at least 12 deaths in law enforcement custody or allegedly resulting from torture, along with further fatalities in shootings and so-called gunfights.
Department of Prisons figures put the number of prisoner deaths in the first nine months of 2026 at a minimum of 251, the large majority occurring in outside hospitals or while being transferred. Ain o Salish Kendra and other monitors have documented comparable or higher counts of prison deaths, with under-trial detainees disproportionately represented. Organisations including Adhikar have also alleged multiple deaths in the custody of law-enforcement agencies since the current government assumed office. Past experience shows that agencies routinely contest responsibility and that many families never succeed in filing cases; the absence of completed prosecutions is not evidence that the deaths did not occur.
Prison overcrowding—reported at more than double official capacity—and chronic shortages of medical staff turn what authorities describe as “illness-related” deaths into a structural failure. When hundreds of people die while in state custody in a single year and official statements treat the problem as nonexistent or purely medical, the gap between claim and record itself becomes a form of lawlessness. The same monitoring reports document hundreds of deaths in mob violence over the same period, a further indicator that formal law-enforcement capacity is neither deterring private violence nor establishing clear public order.
The IGP’s remark, the subsequent institutional defence of it, the two recent unresolved shootings, and the broader statistics on custodial and prison deaths form a consistent picture.
Citizens expect effective crime control; that expectation cannot be converted into licence for methods that take life without due process or for the routine evasion of responsibility. Establishing the rule of law requires the government first to acknowledge the documented facts of deaths in custody and during operations, then to ensure independent investigations and consequences.
If the stated policy is to end “crossfire,” disappearance, and custodial abuse, that policy will be visible only in the conduct of the forces and in their willingness to submit to scrutiny. Until then, the message that travels both to the public and to those who carry arms is one of impunity—and with it the risk that firmness continues to be measured by the number of lives taken rather than by the number of cases resolved through law.