When kids go missing, will they come back alive?

A seven-year-old boy went missing in Bhola on September 20. His family searched for him, filed a general diary with police and even looked in nearby ponds.

 

Three days later, his body was found inside a sack floating in a canal.

 

The death of Mohammad Ismail in Borhanuddin on Tuesday is the latest case to raise questions about the safety of children and the circumstances surrounding children who disappear and are later found dead.

 

Police have detained a 22-year-old man for questioning, but the circumstances of Ismail’s death have yet to be established. Police said the cause of death and possible involvement of others would be known after investigation and a post-mortem examination.

 

The case also comes as data compiled by Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) show a significant number of children were reported killed or found dead in different circumstances during the first eight months of this year.

 

According to ASK’s January-August 2026 documentation, 254 child-killing cases were recorded. The data were compiled from reports in major national newspapers, online news portals and ASK’s own monitoring.

 

Missing children later found dead

One of the most striking figures in the ASK data is the 36 cases involving the recovery of missing children’s bodies during the period.

 

Of them, 13 involved children aged 0-6, 11 were aged 7-12, 10 were aged 13-18 and the age was not mentioned in two cases.

 

That means children aged 12 or below accounted for 24 of the 36 cases, or about two-thirds, where missing children’s bodies were subsequently recovered.

 

ASK also documented 23 other cases involving recovered dead bodies, although the data sheet does not provide enough detail to establish whether these cases involved missing children.

 

Physical violence remains a major category

The data also point to physical violence as a major recorded form of violence against children.

 

ASK documented 68 cases of children killed after physical torture between January and August.

Among them, 18 were aged 0-6, 11 were aged 7-12, 37 were aged 13-18 and the age was not mentioned in two cases.

 

Another 49 cases involved children killed after torture in the domestic sphere. Eight of those children were aged 7-12 and eight were aged 13-18, while 32 were aged 0-6.

 

Together, these two categories account for 117 recorded cases, although they should not necessarily be treated as mutually exclusive because ASK’s documentation classifies cases by the nature and circumstances of violence.

 

Sexual violence also appears in the data

ASK recorded 24 cases of children killed after rape during the eight-month period, along with four cases classified as murder following an attempted rape.

 

The documentation also separately records cases involving boys killed after being raped by men, with two cases in the 0-6 age group, two in the 7-12 group and two in the 13-18 group.

 

The figures therefore show that violence against children is not confined to a single form.

The ASK records include physical torture, domestic violence, sexual violence, abduction, stalking, shooting and cases where the circumstances of death remained mysterious.

 

What the numbers tell us

The data do not establish the cause of death in every case, nor do they show that every child whose body was recovered after going missing was murdered. They are a record of cases reported or documented by ASK and its listed media sources.

 

But the 36 cases of missing children whose bodies were later recovered stand out, particularly because 24 involved children aged 12 or below.

 

Ismail’s case adds a fresh example to that pattern.

For his family, the search that began after his disappearance ended with the discovery of his body in a canal. For investigators, the immediate questions are how he died, who was responsible and whether anyone else was involved.

 

Those answers will depend on the investigation and post-mortem examination. But the broader ASK data suggest that cases involving missing children and recovered bodies deserve particular attention in understanding violence against children in Bangladesh.