COUNTING THE
MONSOON MASSACRE

Two women in burkhas frantically ran through the narrow lanes of a fish market behind East West University in Rampura. The Dhaka neighbourhood, dense with private university campuses, had become a bloody battleground between protesters, armed police, and pro-government cadres during last year’s student uprising.

Chaos had taken hold.

“A man told us to take this route to get to Farazy Hospital,” recalled Selina Begum, “Because there’s heavy gunfire, the Rampura bridge was inaccessible.”

Moments earlier, just after the call to Zuhr prayer on July 18th, Selina had bolted from her home with her daughter. Her son’s phone had rung. But it wasn’t him on the line. “‘He’s been shot,’ a stranger told me,” she said in a recent interview.

By the time Selina reached the hospital, her son was gone, “The doctor said he was in critical condition. They had sent him to a government hospital.”

Mugda Hospital, she guessed. It had to be. When they arrived, her son lay unconscious. His body twitched in irregular spasms, like a fish out of water. He had suffered 75 pellet wounds across his upper torso, including his head.

Selim was moved across different private hospitals seeking treatment. For twelve days, Selim clung to life in the ICU of a private hospital in Dhaka. To get him admitted there, Selina was forced to sign a statement swearing that her son had not joined the student protests. It didn’t matter. Her only son died anyway.

Md Selim Talukder, shot at close range by police, was one of hundreds killed during a three-week massacre unleashed by Bangladesh’s then-ruling Awami League government.

What started as a student protest against the quota-based government job recruitment system turned into a bloody anti-government protest after then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina sought to quell it with brutal use of force.

Hasina fled to India on August 5th. An interim government succeeded her.

In December, the government published a gazette which included a list of 834 people declared to be ‘martyrs’ of the massacre. But the list was not without discrepancies.

Over six months, Netra News spoke with the families of more than 650 victims, interviewed local protest organisers, and reviewed over 2,000 news reports. The project aims to map where the deaths occurred, identify possible perpetrators, and determine which security officials were responsible for the relevant jurisdictions, ultimately seeking to understand the pattern of state violence.

Netra News was able to verify and reconcile details of 750 deaths. Of these, we assessed that at least 705 individuals were likely killed either by security forces or by Awami League-affiliated cadres.

This is not to suggest that the remaining individuals listed in the official gazette were not victims of the same violence. In several cases, Netra News was unable to confirm the exact circumstances surrounding their deaths. Some accounts were ambiguous or contradictory, and in those instances, we could not determine the likely perpetrator with a high degree of confidence.

Shoot first, aim later

Our analysis — based on accounts from victims’ families and news reports — suggests that half of the victims out of 705 did not actively participate in the protests. They were pedestrians, onlookers, or they joined the victory march after learning of Hasina’s ousting, unaware of any imminent attacks. Some of them were shot while returning home, some went out to buy food, some were going to work, and some were even shot while on rooftops, balconies or inside their homes.

It appears that the security forces and Awami League cadres did not spend much time discerning between the protesters and pedestrians or onlookers.

Human Rights Watch concluded in their report that the indiscriminate attacks on bystanders “appeared to be part of a broader pattern.” According to a police officer cited by the report, “The police also shot at onlookers observing the scene from their homes, intending to create fear and send a message that people should not watch what was happening around them.”

Our findings indicate that 97.16% of the deaths caused by security forces or members of the Awami League, or by both groups, were due to gunshots.

All victims who died from fatal wounds during the curfew days — from July 20th to July 22nd — were shot, according to their families and news reports. This indicates that the forces enforcing the curfew openly used firearms. The pattern continued on the final days of the regime, on August 4th and August 5th.

Only a handful of victims died after being beaten or stabbed by Awami League-linked armed cadres. Two victims died after an executive magistrate’s car rammed them in Sherpur, and two others were drowned in Madaripur and Sylhet. The rest were gunned down.

At least 272 victims actively joined the protests, according to their families and news reports. Most victims were young. Generation Z (individuals born between 1997 and 2012) not only led the movement but also paid the ultimate price in droves. Our analysis shows 61.31% of the victims were from Generation Z, followed by millennials (29.16%).

The youngest victim of the massacre was a four-year-old, and the oldest was in his seventies.

Killing Zones

As the July massacre unfolded, Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, saw the highest number of deaths, at least 479, followed by other killing fields in Gazipur, Narayanganj and Narsingdi.

In Dhaka, the highest number of victims died after being fatally injured in Wari, an administrative division of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, followed by Uttara, Mirpur and Gulshan divisions. Wari comprises the Jatrabari and Kadamtali police stations. The officials of these stations are accused of killing at least 107 victims.

The violence was particularly indiscriminate on July 19th, 20th, and August 5th.

According to our analysis, at least 325 victims died in the third week of July as the security forces and the Awami League cracked down on the protesters. The attacks were intensified on July 18th, when 53 people suffered deadly injuries, and on the following day, the number rose by threefold.

On the evening of July 19th, following around a hundred deaths and at least a dozen severely injured protesters, the Hasina regime imposed a curfew with “shoot-at-sight” orders starting at midnight on July 20th. The number of fatal injuries from bullet wounds significantly declined in the following days; however, they surged again on August 4th when the armed cadres of the Awami League became particularly active following a directive from the party to its members to “gather” in every ward, district, and city.

Numerous photographs and videos from that day captured Awami League members parading in the streets armed with military-grade weapons, sharp machetes, and blunt objects. Notably, half of the victims who suffered fatal injuries leading to their deaths were harmed by these Awami League members or armed cadres backed by the party, allegedly killing 86.

On August 5th, at least 267 people suffered fatal injuries; some died on that day, and others succumbed to their injuries in the following months.

A massacre approved by the ‘Core Committee’

All of the country’s chiefs of security forces and intelligence agencies comprised this ‘core’ committee, according to the UN’s human rights office’s report on the massacre, published in February 2025. It was headed by the then Home Minister, Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal.

The committee met on July 18th for the first time and decided to engage the paramilitary force BGB, which carries military-grade weapons used in wars. The high death toll in Wari and Narayanganj, among other zones and districts, is linked to a strategic decision made by the then Awami League government.

Kamal ordered the security forces to clear the thousands of protesters who were blocking the Dhaka-Chattogram highway (N1), the country’s economic lifeline, according to the OHCHR report. Wari’s Jatrabari area is the gateway to the Dhaka-Chattogram highway, which passes through Narayanganj’s Chittagong Road.

Police and security forces became increasingly desperate to remove the protesters from the two areas that sit on the highway. From July 19th to July 22nd, at least 72 individuals suffered fatal injuries in these areas.

According to our analysis, all but one of the victims who were shot in Narayanganj were shot in areas adjacent to the highway. However, the actual numbers may be higher.

Netra News captured photographs of senior police officials visiting Jatrabari on July 22nd after the ‘successful’ clearing operation. At least three of these officials — IGP Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, RAB DG Harun Ar Rashid, and Special Branch Chief Monirul Islam — joined the Core Committee meeting with the then Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal on July 18th.

The following is the list of individuals who made up this committee: Former chief of police Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun; the BGB Director General, Major General Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman Siddiqui; the head of the RAB, Harun-Ar-Rashid (under United States sanctions); Major General A. K. M. Aminul Haque, Director General of Ansar and the Village Defence Party; the head of the DGFI, Major General Hamidul Haque; the chief of the National Security Intelligence (NSI), Major General Hossain Al Morshed; Monirul Islam, chief of the police’s Special Branch; and Ziaul Ahsan, the head of the NTMC.

The UN report also claims that a general from the Bangladesh Army joined the committee from July 20th, shortly after the imposition of a nationwide curfew.

July 19: Enter BNP and Jamaat activists

In the state-sponsored massacre, 12.22% of the victims were members or activists of the BNP, according to their families and news reports, while 2.13% were from Jamaat. However, both parties claim higher figures.

Netra News asked the family members of the victims and reviewed the news reports to ascertain whether the victims were involved with any political party. Our findings indicate that 88 victims were leaders or activists of the BNP or its affiliated organisations, while 15 victims were associated with Jamaat or its affiliated groups.

However, it is likely that many family members of the victims may not be aware of their political affiliations, as they lived far away from them; hence, the number is not accurate and might not capture the full extent of the parties’ loss during the protests.

Even so, it provides a crucial pattern.

Our analysis shows that, though a member of BNP’s student wing, Chhatra Dal, died on July 16th, the party started losing its activists in large numbers from July 19th. It lost 25 of its activists and leaders on the streets on that day, with two deaths on July 20th and three on July 21st, suggesting that the party got involved with the movement on July 19th.

BNP was heavily active on August 4th, and almost one-fifth of the victims of the day were party leaders or activists. On the following day, the party lost 34 of its men.

Jamaat lost three activists on July 19th, the highest in July, and ten on August 5th. At least one member of Gana Sanghati Andolan, Gono Odhikar Parishad and Islami Andolan Bangladesh died, too, during the protests.

However, not everyone on the martyrs’ list belonging to these parties was active in the protest. Some of them died while crossing the road or returning from work, according to our analysis based on testimonies of family members and news reports.

Who were the perpetrators

Most of the victims died allegedly at the hands of the police, followed by the armed cadres of the Awami League.

Our tally — verified by victims’ families, witnesses and news reports — indicates that police inflicted deadly injuries on at least 467 victims. The police were most brutal on July 19th and August 5th. In 61 cases, police worked with the BGB to shoot at the protesters, and given the complex nature of the situation, it has been extremely difficult for the witnesses and journalists to ascertain whose shots took the lives of the victims.

It is also likely that the witnesses might have used police interchangeably to describe the members of the security forces in some cases.

According to our analysis, at least 43 victims died as a result of coordinated attacks by the Awami League and the police, and 27 more died at the hands of the BGB. In two instances, witnesses reported that the army shot the victims. On August 4th, during a protest in Sherpur, a government official's car struck and killed at least two protesters.

467POLICE

86AWAMI LEAGUE

63POLICE-BGB

43POLICE-AL

27BGB

19OTHERS