Solitary confinement: ‘Social death’ before the noose

Ismail Hossain spent 14 years in solitary confinement before his death sentence was overturned.

"For those years in the condemned cell, it was like I was dying every day. I lived in constant fear that they would arrive at any moment and tell me to take my final bath, that it is time," he recalled.

Ismail's account is among many documented by anthropologist and documentary photographer Mosfiqur Rahman Johan in his project 'Living on Death Row', which exposes the human cost of Bangladesh's capital punishment system. 

Across the country's prisons, thousands of men and women live under the shadow of the noose. For most, execution never comes. Yet they remain confined in 'condemned cells' — narrow six-by-eight-feet compartments where life continues in the waiting room of death.

A landmark High Court verdict last year ruled that death row prisoners could not be held in solitary confinement until their appeals had been exhausted, following a petition by three inmates. But the state has since appealed the ruling in the Supreme Court's Appellate Division, leaving the matter unresolved.

Under Bangladesh's criminal justice system, inmates sentenced to death are kept in separate cells while their appeals or mercy petitions are pending. This confinement can last months, years or even decades. Authorities justify this as a security measure to prevent escape, violence or suicide. Rights groups, however, condemn it as cruel, psychologically damaging and a violation of human rights.

The practice dates back to British colonial rule, when appeals were far swifter. Johan's research reveals that solitary confinement has become the routine condition of death-row imprisonment, not an exceptional measure. 

Drawing from his earlier documentation of enforced disappearances and secret detention sites known as 'Aynaghar', Johan calls the death penalty "state-sanctioned murder — a revenge-based system incompatible with modern justice."

According to rights group Odhikar, 3,739 people currently await execution in Bangladesh's prisons.

Social death before the final goodbye

Johan's documentary offers a direct and damning visual testimony to the daily reality of this institutionalised cruelty.

He noted, "A death row prisoner inhabits a world of its own — a six-by-eight-foot cell that becomes their entire existence. The toilet, food space and a thin sleeping mat are all crammed into this suffocating box. Under the 22/2 confinement rule, inmates spend twenty-two hours locked inside, allowed out only twice a day — once to bathe and once to walk briefly, often alone, in a small enclosed yard."

Johan added, "Many who endure long periods of solitary confinement die within a few years of release. Years without sunlight or movement leave their bodies frail and their minds irreparably scarred." 

He and the survivors called it "social death". When a guard calls for meals or bathing, prisoners think it is the summons for execution. Each bath feels like the last; each meal, the final supper.

This relentless fear, Johan said, is the true face of death row — a life suspended between existence and extinction. 

Fault lines in justice

Johan's analysis has reached far beyond prison walls, exposing deep flaws in solitary confinement and the broader death penalty system in Bangladesh, which he finds fundamentally defective and discriminatory. 

"The primary victims of capital punishment are not the affluent or well-connected, but the poor, the economically weak, and the socially vulnerable. These individuals often cannot afford proper legal representation or navigate the complex court system. Access to a competent lawyer and the fundamental right to a fair trial — the pillars of justice — are effectively denied to the marginalised," he said.

He highlighted the reliance on forced confessions, noting that the judicial system often becomes "revenge-based", driven by emotion and politics rather than objective justice.

Citing the Abrar Fahad murder case, he criticised,  "The sentencing of 16 individuals to death, was a media trial and injustice in the name of justice, where not all were equally culpable." 

Political will also plays a dramatic role. While 47 executions occurred during the 15-year period under the former Hasina administration, the number of death sentences handed down — the initial convictions — reached over 3,500. 

Lengthy court battles

Johan's documentary showcased the lengthy, costly legal procedures of the victims. One such example is that of Anwer Hossain, who was arrested in 2005 at Kamalapur Railway Station for an "unknown murder" he did not commit. 

During remand, he was tortured — beaten, electrocuted and waterboarded — into confessing while officers held a gun to his head.

Convicted on that forced confession, he spent 17 years in solitary confinement.

For his family, the ordeal became another form of punishment, according to the documentary. Though entitled to free legal aid, hidden costs — travel to distant courts, small bribes to clerks, and lost wages — drained what little they had. Shunned by neighbours, they sold their home and eventually stopped visiting.

Anwer's case wound through endless hearings before his conviction was overturned in 2022. Upon release, his lawyers helped him rebuild his life with a job in a clothing shop in Jatrabari. He eventually moved to Mohammadpur, where no one knew the years he had lost.

Majeda Begum, tortured into a false confession and sentenced to death, raised her infant son inside a condemned cell.

The scarred and the innocent: Victims' accounts

Johan began documenting the lives of death row prisoners and their families shortly after 2013, following his exposé on enforced disappearances. His aim was to unmask the flawed legal mechanisms linking illegal detention with prolonged state confinement.

This work proved exceptionally difficult due to intense secrecy and social stigma, with no public data available on former inmates. Locating subjects required painstaking ethnographic research. Ismail Hossain, along with another victim, Majeda Begum, were found only after Johan deployed local contacts to search villages; Majeda's family, forced to relocate, was traced through an extended relative. This dedicated effort was costly and self-funded.

Majeda Begum, a poor housewife from Rangpur, was arrested in 2007 while seven months pregnant. In prison, she was tortured until she confessed to murdering a child. Officers threatened to rape her and electrocute her 13-month-old son, Maruf, unless she admitted guilt.

In 2015, a court sentenced her to death based solely on that coerced confession. She entered the condemned cell with her baby, who learned to walk and talk inside bars. In 2021, the High Court found fatal contradictions in her case, proving her innocence — but not before she lost six years of her life, and her son his childhood.

Another victim, Sheikh Zahid, holds a small, faded photograph in Johan's documentary. "This was taken the day I was sent to jail," he said, after 20 years in solitary confinement. Wrongfully convicted, Zahid could not attend his parents' funeral; he remained locked away and forbidden.

Mohammad Nasir endured similar torment. Sentenced to death in a false case, he spent eight years in a condemned cell. "The police beat us until our limbs broke, hung us from a fan, and forced confessions under Section 164," he said. "Many prisoners died of heart attacks. We lived every night fearing we'd be next."

Collective trauma: Families of the condemned

The state's punishment does not end at the prisoner's cell door; it ripples outward, shattering the lives of innocent family members.

Johan emphasised, "This trauma is both personal and social. Families of the condemned are often ostracised and effectively cast out by their communities."

His documentary also recounts the story of Ismail Hossain, whose children were isolated — his son's playmates stopped playing with him because he was the child of a death row inmate. Marriage prospects are similarly affected. The daughters of Abdul Hai saw their marriage arrangements collapse due to their father's conviction. Even when an individual is later proven innocent, as in Majeda's case, society continues to treat them as criminals.

Johan compared this with other countries, "In India, reforms allow spouses to meet privately during prison visits. Our nation has an obligation to support these innocent family members, to acknowledge their suffering.

"In Bangladesh, however, stigma becomes a secondary, collective sentence, compounding the injustice," he added.