Identical charges, scripted confessions: Inquiry commission finds uniform prosecution patterns in disappearance cases

The Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances has accused law enforcement agencies of relying on copy-paste case files and pre-written charges to prosecute victims of disappearances and political detentions during the former Awami League government.

In a newly released excerpt from its second interim report, the Commission outlines how victims from various years, professions, and regions were consistently charged using near-identical language, with little attention to individual facts or evidence.

The Commission says this pattern reflects a "pre-scripted" approach to criminalisation that undermines the justice system and substitutes legal procedure with ideological targeting.

Systemic reliance on same laws

According to the report, most victims (198 individuals) in the Commission's sample were prosecuted under the Anti-Terrorism Act, 2009, regardless of when or where they were abducted.

The Explosive Substances Act and the Arms Act were also widely used, with far fewer cases under the ICT Act, the Digital Security Act, or the Special Powers Act.

The uniformity of these charges—applied to individuals with vastly different life circumstances—suggests that authorities were not investigating specific actions but instead applying broad national security laws to legitimise state repression, the Commission said.

Recycled charges and vague accusations

The inquiry found that many of the charges followed a standard format. 

Language used to describe online dissent, political protest, or critical social media posts was nearly identical across cases.

Common allegations included attempts to "incite public unrest," "undermine state institutions," or "spread extremist ideology," even where the supposed offences were unrelated or benign.

This templated approach, according to the Commission, signals an intentional strategy to cast dissent as a national security threat, allowing state authorities to bypass due process and suppress opposition under the guise of law enforcement.

Use of unverifiable intelligence

Across multiple districts and years, law enforcement officers routinely cited anonymous "secret sources" to justify arrests, searches, and surveillance.

These sources were rarely documented or subject to judicial review.

The Commission describes this as a "recurring formula" that enabled unchecked police power and contributed to normalising unaccountable practices.

Pre-written narratives of escape and confession

Another repeated claim involved suspects allegedly attempting to flee as soon as they spotted law enforcement personnel.

The Commission found this narrative of "attempted escape" in charge sheets from districts including Narayanganj, Gazipur, Chattogram, and Bogura—regardless of the specifics of each case.

Similarly, officers frequently claimed that suspects immediately confessed to being members of banned organisations, offering detailed ideological justifications and organisational histories within hours of arrest.

The Commission questions the plausibility of such instant admissions, calling them "scripted templates" unlikely to reflect actual interrogation outcomes.

Possession of literature as incriminating evidence

Authorities were also found to repeatedly cite the recovery of religious or political literature as proof of terrorist affiliation. Charge sheets often listed books or pamphlets labelled "jihadist" found during raids, sometimes stored together in a bag or drawer.

The Commission noted the implausibility of these large, neatly bundled collections appearing at the time of arrest across diverse locations, calling the pattern "scripted and curated."

Uniform confessions during preliminary questioning

According to the report, suspects were often recorded as giving detailed confessions immediately upon arrest—outlining group affiliations, motives, training, and future plans.

This level of detail, consistency, and timing led the Commission to conclude that such confessions were not the product of spontaneous admission, but rather the result of copy-pasted scripts reused by police across different cases.

The Commission also interviewed multiple law enforcement officers, who confirmed the existence of such pre-written templates.

These were reportedly "lightly edited" to suit each case but rarely reflected the accused's actual statements.

A system designed for repression, not justice

Taken together, these findings depict a criminal justice system that, according to the Commission, prioritised ideological control over fairness.

Charges were not tailored to individual actions or evidence but constructed to reinforce a political narrative.

The reliance on recycled accusations, unverifiable intelligence, and scripted confessions calls into question the legitimacy of many prosecutions and highlights the need for legal reform, judicial independence, and stronger procedural safeguards, the report concludes.