Bangladesh promulgates ordinance with death penalty

Staff Reporter :

The government has promulgated the Enforced Disappearance Prevention and Remedies Ordinance, 2025, which includes provisions for the death penalty and life imprisonment for individuals found guilty of involvement in enforced disappearance cases. The Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs Division under the Ministry of Law issued a gazette late on Monday.
The Council of Advisers approved the draft of the ordinance on November 6.

According to the ordinance, tribunals will be set up at district and divisional levels to deal with the cases of prevention and prosecution of enforced disappearances.

Offences under the ordinance are non-bailable and non-compoundable.
As per the ordinance, if the victim dies as a result of enforced disappearance or if the person cannot be found alive or dead even five years after the disappearance, the offender may be sentenced to death or life imprisonment.

If any public servant or member of a law enforcement agency arrests, detains, abducts, or otherwise deprives a person of liberty and deny the act or concealing the fate or whereabouts of the person, thereby placing the individual outside the protection of the law may face life imprisonment or a prison term of up to 10 years, it says. Anyone found to have destroyed evidence of disappearance, or constructed, installed, or used secret detention centres for enforced disappearances may face up to seven years in prison.

The ordinance also sets out penalties for senior officers or commanders of law enforcement agencies.

It states that if a superior officer orders, authorises, approves, consents to or instigates the commission of such crimes by subordinates or participates in the crime he or she will face the same punishment prescribed for the offence.

A superior may also be punished if negligence, incompetence, or failure to maintain discipline or control enables subordinates to commit an enforced disappearance, the ordinance says.

It further states that the location of an arrested person may be kept confidential ‘in the interest of state security’ until the person is produced before a magistrate.
Trials may proceed in absentia if the accused is on the run.