26 July 2024: Hasina finally visits hospitals, but crackdowns intensify

The state's security response intensified on 26 July last year as Bangladesh witnessed a deepening crackdown on student protest organisers and a further curtailment of civil liberties amid ongoing unrest over the quota reform movement. 

In a continuation of recent actions, plainclothes members of the Detective Branch (DB) forcibly picked up three key student leaders — Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder — from Gonoshasthaya Nagar Hospital in Dhaka, where at least two of them were undergoing treatment. 

Witnesses and family members said the men, without identifying themselves, entered the hospital at around 3:30pm, seized the trio, and took away their mobile phones before disappearing with them to an undisclosed location.

This marked the second time within a week that all three had been detained. Nahid had previously been abducted from a house in Sabujbagh in the early hours of 20 July, tortured until unconscious, and later abandoned under a bridge in Purbachal. Asif and Baker were similarly abducted on 19 July and released blindfolded on 24 July in separate locations. 

I never wanted anyone to lose their dear ones in this country.

PM Hasina speaks to media at Mirpur 10 Metro Station on 25 July 2024. Photo: BSS

Sheikh Hasina

In the evening of 26 July, a scheduled press briefing by the Anti-discrimination Student Movement in front of Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital was cancelled. Coordinators had planned to update the public on the movement's stance and the status of missing members. 

However, under what one organiser described as "huge pressure," the briefing was suspended. Journalists who had gathered at the venue waited until at least 9:30pm before it became clear that the organisers would not appear.

These events unfolded against the backdrop of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's second public appearance since the imposition of a nationwide curfew. Visiting Dhaka Medical College Hospital, Hasina once again condemned the recent wave of protest and violence, blaming the BNP-Jamaat coalition and Shibir activists for what she described as a concerted effort to destabilise the country and tarnish its international image. 

She reiterated that the current phase of destruction, which began on 17 July, differed in character from past episodes of political unrest, claiming, without presenting evidence, that this time gunpowder had been used to intensify the damage.

Hasina's repeated emphasis on property damage and the sabotage of state infrastructure, rather than on the human cost of the security response, drew growing criticism. 

Meanwhile, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) issued a fresh call for national unity to remove the Awami League from power, accusing the government of authoritarianism and of unleashing indiscriminate force against peaceful dissent. The party demanded the immediate release of detained students and accountability for the deaths and disappearances of protest organisers and demonstrators across the country.