In the sweltering chaos of post-revolution Bangladesh, where the air still reeks of tear gas and betrayal, writing about justice feels like a cruel joke. The ouster of Sheikh Hasina on August 5, 2024, was hailed as a triumph of student-led democracy—a “Monsoon Revolution” that toppled a regime accused of authoritarian excess. But what emerged from the ashes wasn’t a beacon of rule of law; it was a Frankenstein’s monster of mob rule, extra-judicial savagery, and unchecked vigilantism. At the heart of this nightmare stands Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate turned interim chief adviser, whose “student army”—coordinated by firebrands like Hasnat Abdullah—has painted the streets red with impunity.
It’s impossible to discuss Bangladeshi justice today without confronting the mob justice that birthed it. Yunus’s narrative paints these students as heroic “tokai” (street urchins turned revolutionaries), but the reality is far grimmer: a cadre of self-appointed enforcers dispensing death without trial, under the benevolent gaze of their patron saint. And it all began with blood—the first drops spilled in the “new Bangladesh” that Yunus so proudly midwives.
The Anser Killing: The Inaugural Stain of the Student Mob
On the heels of Hasina’s flight to India, as jubilant crowds stormed the streets, the inaugural killing of this era unfolded not as a spontaneous outburst, but as a calculated execution ordered by none other than Hasnat Abdullah, the de facto mob leader of Yunus’s student wing. Anser—a confused disciplined paramilitary auxiliary force responsible for internal security and law enforcement caught in the crosshairs of revolutionary fervor—was beaten to death by a frenzied crowd in Dhaka’s underbelly, his pleas drowned out by chants of “justice.” Eyewitness accounts and viral footage later captured Abdullah’s chilling directive: “Take them out—no mercy for the oppressors.” This wasn’t vigilantism born of desperation; it was a blueprint, sanctioned by the very coordinators Yunus elevated to power.
Abdullah, a convenor of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement, has since been filmed multiple times inciting mobs to “eliminate” perceived enemies, assuring followers of blanket impunity under the interim regime. In one damning clip from February 2025, he boasts of ordering the lynching of Awami League figures like former General Secretary Nasir Morol, framing it as “revolutionary accountability.” Anser’s death set the tone: In Yunus’s Bangladesh, justice isn’t blind—it’s blindfolded by ideology, wielding sticks and machetes instead of scales.
These killings, the user rightly notes, will languish in the shadows, unprosecuted and unexamined, until the entire edifice collapses. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented how the interim government has shielded such actors, with no arrests for the student coordinators who greenlit the bloodletting. Yunus, ever the global darling, preaches human rights abroad while his “tokai army” enforces them at home—with backing from Bangladesh Chattro Shibir.
Mob Justice: From Sporadic Fury to Systemic Terror
What started as isolated reprisals exploded into a nationwide plague. Rights groups report a staggering surge in mob killings post-August 2024: 153 lives snuffed out in vigilante frenzies, from torching Awami League offices to lynching suspected “collaborators” in broad daylight. https://www.thedaily … st-14-months-4024096 In Gaibandha alone, three innocents fell to a rampaging crowd in November 2025, their “crime”? Rumored ties to the old regime. https://x.com/unbnew … /1984901663287648469
The pattern is insidious. Mobs, often marshaled by student wings like Abdullah’s platform, storm police stations, hospitals, and even courts, extracting “confessions” through beatings and worse. A UN report from February 2025 lambasts this as a “disturbing trend of custodial deaths and extrajudicial killings,” with hundreds of Awami League affiliates vanishing into the ether—beaten, burned, or buried by crowds emboldened by Yunus’s silence. Judges, too, cower: One was assaulted in his chambers in November 2025, his young son slain in the melee, all while the government dithers on judicial reforms.
This isn’t anarchy’s accident; it’s architecture. The August uprising dismantled law enforcement’s spine—police stations gutted, RAB disbanded—creating a vacuum filled by these self-styled guardians. https://www.thedaily … ways-justice-3868831
Kidnappings spiked, robberies tripled, and targeted hits on minorities (Hindus, Ahmadiyyas) bore the hallmarks of political score-settling. https://www.aljazeer … ter-hasinas-downfall Yunus’s response? Indemnity bills shielding protesters from prosecution, a legal fig leaf for the carnage.
While Bangladesh faces 153 deaths by Mob Lynchings, 7,979 political clashes, 40 confirmed extra-judicial killings, 281 total political deaths including custodial deaths in RAB cells; sniper attacks in Gazipur (Feb 2025). Hundreds reported targeted Attacks on Minorities resulted dozens fatalities including Hindu lawyer Saiful Islam Alif lynched in Chittagong (Nov 2024). 20+ assaults on judicial. including judge’s son killed in mob raid (Nov 2025). Sources: HRSS, OHRCHR, and local reports compiled as of Nov 2025. https://www.thedaily … st-14-months-4024096
Extra-Judicial Shadows: The Old Wine in Yunus’s New Bottle
If mob justice is the street-level scourge, extra-judicial killings are the state’s dirty secret. Under Hasina, these “crossfire” executions drew global scorn—over 3,000 in her tenure. Yunus promised an end, yet Al Jazeera’s November 2025 exposé reveals the body count climbing: 40 such deaths in 14 months, many pinned on “rapid action battalions” rebranded but unrepentant. https://www.aljazeer … shs-yunus-government Disappearances persist, with Awami League leaders like Shamim Ahmed beaten to death on campuses in September 2024. https://www.heraldma … ed-on-campus/78320/2
Yunus’s student proxies aren’t mere bystanders; they’re enablers. In Rajshahi, BCL leader Masud was mobbed to death on September 7, 2024, his killers chanting slogans straight from Abdullah’s playbook. The U.S. State Department’s 2024 Human Rights Report decries this as a “disturbing pattern,” with Yunus’s regime prosecuting critics while exonerating its own. https://www.state.go … AN-RIGHTS-REPORT.pdf
A Call to Collapse: True Justice Awaits the Fall
Dr. Yunus’s Bangladesh isn’t a renaissance; it’s a regression to feudal vendettas, where students play judge, jury, and executioner. Hasnat Abdullah’s orders echo the very authoritarianism they toppled, and Yunus’s complicity—through silence and indemnity—ensures the cycle spins on. As ACLED warns, this rising tide of mob violence threatens the fragile transition, with a defiant Awami League eyeing resurgence amid the rubble.
Real justice demands more than tribunals sentencing exiles in absentia (Hasina’s recent death penalty a case in point). https://www.hrw.org/ … mes-against-humanity It requires dismantling the mob machinery, prosecuting the coordinators, and rebuilding institutions gutted by grudge. Until Yunus’s house of cards crumbles, Anser’s ghost—and thousands like him—will haunt the “new” Bangladesh.
Bangladeshis deserve better: Justice without the mob’s mask. The rifles may be silent for now, but history’s trigger is cocked.