In mid-August, expatriate Azad was named a murder suspect for an incident that took place on August 5. The problem is that he was already in police custody at the time, having been arrested on July 23 on suspicion of being a BNP activist.

Azad was granted bail on August 8, according to a TBS article published on October 30. Police said the matter will be investigated and once he is proved innocent, Azad’s name will not appear in the charge sheet.

But Azad’s story is not a unique case. During July and August, a record number of similar cases were filed – many of which, upon investigation, were found to be unfounded.

There is a difference though. Before August 5, the cases filed were mostly against BNP or Jamaat activists along with those involved in the student movement.

The people who are involved in collecting and filing the false files – the “brokers” – need to be dealt with. The detective branch is aware of who I am.

lawyer Jyotirmoy Barua

After this date, civilians, former government ministers, the prime minister and some critics of the current interim government became the new targets.

TBS spoke with legal experts and former police officials to understand what allows these cases to be classified and whether there are any preventative measures in place.

Abuse of the law for personal grievances

Under the Bangladeshi legal system, the classification of offenses falls under the category of “cognizable” (this equates to serious charges such as murder, rape, kidnapping, etc.) or non-cognizable (such as theft, assault, defamation, etc.).

When a case is made for a cognizable offence, the police are in fact required by law to register it. “If the allegations seem frivolous, the police can register them as a General Diary (GD), which means it will be cognizable but not a full case,” said Muhammad Nurul Huda, a former inspector general of police.

Now, if a case is taken to the magistrate, who decides to treat it as an FIR (First Information Report), then there is no other option but to treat it as such, he further explained.

“After investigation, if the case is found to be baseless or false, then it will be treated as such. Those who filed the case will be punished under Section 211,” Huda added.

But when a case is filed, it doesn’t necessarily mean an immediate arrest. “Being named an accused in the FIR does not mean that the person will be arrested (by default), this is not said anywhere.”

At the same time, if the police do not prepare the file, it leads to other problems. “Police are accused of affiliation or bias. It’s a Catch-22 situation,” Huda said.

Speaking about the spate of filings in July and after August 5, Huda said: “When these laws were made, the people who were involved in filing the cases had a moral standard, they were not liars.”

Veteran Supreme Court lawyer ZI Khan Panna told The Daily Star in late September: “It will be impossible to get justice for the real victims through cases that appear to be aimed at harassing people.”

Panna himself was also named in a murder case on 17 October.

According to a TBS report, Panna responded by saying, “I object to being listed as number 94 out of 180 accused. If they had filed a case, I should have been the number one accused. This is clearly influenced by certain people.”

After the organizations demanded immediate withdrawal of Panna’s name from the list of accused, complainant Abu Baker, whose son had been killed during the July Uprising, arrived at the police station with a written petition to remove Panna’s name.

“I work as a laborer. The frequent phone calls are disrupting my work. My employer will fire me if this continues. I have filed the case through BNP-Jamaat lawyers; you can assume what you want,” Baker told the media.

Advocate Jyotirmoy Barua, a lawyer at the Bangladesh Supreme Court, cited a fragile law and order state, the vulnerability of the caretaker government and people taking advantage of the situation as cumulative reasons behind the spate of “false cases”.

“There are some technical issues,” Barua said. “Many of the students’ families do not live in Dhaka. Because of the shutdown of the internet, the disruption of communications and the chaos – even if the families wanted to, there was no way to find out what happened (to their children).”

At such a time, if we are to study some of these cases at random, according to Barua, it will show that the “brokers” were behind these cases.

“They tell the families, ‘where would you find the names (of the accused), I have them’. They share the list in exchange for money. Many police officers are also involved in this,” said Barua.

Moreover, due to the volatility of the facts and an overwhelmed justice system where cases are being prepared with 300-500 names on the list of accused, how would it be possible to thoroughly investigate each of these names?

Then there are cases where 50 of the 450 names in the list of accused are from Rangpur, for a case filed in Dhaka. “Then the investigating officer has to go to Rangpur,” Barua added.

“There are cases when the same file is drawn up in two different systems. For example, two students were killed in New Market. One family filed the case at the New Market police station, while the other filed it at the International Criminal Court. the procedures will take different forms,” ​​he explained.

There is also confusion about where to file.

“The government has no measure or mechanism in place to tackle these cases at the outset, so there is no scope for checks and balances,” Barua said.

“Furthermore, people rushed to file, thinking that if they did it later, they would be asked by the court why they delayed doing so,” he added.

How to prevent it?

Underscoring the unprecedented scale of the carnage in independent Bangladesh, Barua said a major change was needed.

“There should be new strategies and new ways to ensure justice for students, civilians and garment workers (injured or killed) in the massacre. It is their right,” said Barua,

He suggested eliminating or addressing the root causes behind the spate of “false cases”.

“The people who are involved in collecting and filing the false files – the ‘brokers’ – must be dealt with,” he said, “The Detective Branch is aware of who they are.”

Although a country like Bangladesh is unlikely to implement this legal framework as it requires funds, a case in point is England.

“The police station does not admit the case as an FIR (immediately). The Crown Prosecution Service analyzes and understands the case first. If they find it eligible, only then it is sent to the court and only then it will be registered as an FIR,” Barua explained.

“Otherwise, the case is not sent to court. In this case, the accused are summoned and given warnings”.