They were supposed to protect the nation. Instead, they helped plan a grenade attack that killed 24 people, facilitated the largest arms smuggling operation in the country’s history, fabricated evidence to protect the guilty, and tortured innocents into false confessions. This is the story of how Bangladesh’s intelligence agencies — DGFI and NSI — were turned into the ruling party’s private enforcers.
You have heard about the grenade attack. You have heard about the arms haul. You have heard about the “Joj Mia” fabrication and the washed crime scenes and the one-man commissions.
But you haven’t heard the connective tissue. The thread that runs through all of it. The reason these atrocities were possible — not just tolerated, not just permitted, but actively facilitated — is that Bangladesh’s two premier intelligence agencies, the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) and the National Security Intelligence (NSI), were repurposed from protecting the nation to protecting the ruling party.
This is not an accusation. This is what the court records say. This is what confessional statements confirm. This is what US diplomatic cables documented in real time. This is what the evidence — evidence that was gathered after the BNP government fell, after the caretaker government took over, after the institutions that were supposed to investigate finally could — proves beyond any reasonable doubt.
And it has never been told as one story. Until now.
What DGFI and NSI Actually Are
Before we get into what they did, let me explain what they are.
DGFI — Directorate General of Forces Intelligence is Bangladesh’s military intelligence agency. It is supposed to be the country’s eyes and ears on external threats: foreign military movements, espionage, sabotage, terrorist networks operating across borders. It was modeled after India’s RAW and Pakistan’s ISI — professional intelligence services designed to protect national security.
NSI — National Security Intelligence is the civilian equivalent. It is supposed to handle domestic intelligence: internal security threats, counterintelligence, monitoring groups that might destabilize the country. It reports to the Prime Minister’s Office.
Both agencies are powerful. Both operate with near-total secrecy. Both have budgets that are not publicly disclosed. Both have the authority to surveil, detain, and interrogate. And both, between 2001 and 2006, were turned into instruments of the BNP-Jamaat coalition government.
This is not a matter of a few bad actors. This is structural capture. The heads of both agencies were appointed by the ruling party. They answered to the ruling party. And when the ruling party needed something done — something illegal, something violent, something that would destroy evidence and protect the guilty — they did it.
August 21, 2004: The Intelligence Agencies Help Plan a Massacre
Let’s start with the most damning evidence. Because what happened on August 21, 2004 was not just a terrorist attack. It was a state-facilitated assassination attempt, and the intelligence agencies were in the room.
The 2018 court verdict — the one that convicted 19 people to death and 19 to life imprisonment — established the following chain of command:
Brigadier General (Retd) Abdur Rahim, then Director General of NSI, participated in the planning meeting at Hawa Bhaban — the political office of Tarique Rahman, son of Prime Minister Khaleda Zia. He was sentenced to death for his role.
Brigadier General (Retd) Rezzaqul Haider Chowdhury, then Director General of DGFI, also participated in the planning. He too was sentenced to death.
Let me say that again, because it bears repeating. The heads of both of Bangladesh’s premier intelligence agencies — the men whose job was to protect the nation from exactly this kind of attack — sat in a room where the assassination of the Leader of the Opposition was being planned. And they did not stop it. They facilitated it.
The attack itself was carried out by Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) operatives. But the planning, the coordination, the security arrangements that allowed 13 military-grade Arges grenades to be thrown into a crowd of 20,000 people on one of the most prominent streets in the capital — that required state-level intelligence support. The kind of support that only DGFI and NSI could provide.
The confessional statement of Mufti Abdul Hannan, HuJI’s chief, confirmed that the operation received “full administrative backing” from Lutfozzaman Babar, then State Minister for Home Affairs. Babar assured HuJI operatives that they would face no consequences. And he could make that assurance because he knew — because the intelligence agencies that were supposed to prevent the attack were helping to plan it.
Thirteen grenades. Twenty-four dead. Over five hundred injured. And the heads of both intelligence agencies were in on it from the start.
The Cover-Up: Intelligence Agencies as Evidence Destroyers
But the intelligence agencies’ role did not end with the attack. In fact, their most sustained and systematic contribution came after the grenades exploded — in the cover-up.
Within hours of the attack, the BNP government launched what can only be described as an intelligence-coordinated destruction of evidence. The crime scene on Bangabandhu Avenue — one of the most significant terrorist attack sites in the country’s history — was washed with water and detergent. Recovered grenades were deliberately destroyed rather than preserved for forensic analysis. Volunteer security groups who normally secured rooftops during rallies had been barred from the area before the attack — the same rooftops from which the grenades were thrown.
This was not amateur hour. This was a professional intelligence operation. You don’t wash a crime scene with detergent by accident. You don’t destroy recovered grenades by accident. You don’t clear rooftops of civilian security by accident. These are the actions of trained intelligence operatives executing a coordinated plan to eliminate the evidence.
Then came the “Joj Mia” fabrication.
When the public outcry became impossible to ignore, the CID — operating under the direction of the Home Ministry and with the full knowledge of the intelligence establishment — produced a convenient scapegoat: Jamal Ahmed, known as “Joj Mia”, a petty criminal from Noakhali. He was arrested on June 10, 2005, tortured in custody, and coerced into giving a false confessional statement under Section 164 on June 26, 2005.
The CID claimed Joj Mia and 14 members of the “Seven Star” criminal group had carried out the attack. It was a complete fabrication. The investigation went nowhere for two full years — because the intelligence agencies, who should have been solving the case, were instead actively directing the cover-up.
Inspector General of Police Khoda Baksh Chowdhury was later convicted for his role in misleading the investigation. So were SP Ruhul Amin and ASPs Abdur Rashid and Munshi Atikur Rahman of the CID. But these were mid-level officers following orders. The real architects of the cover-up were the intelligence chiefs who sat in Hawa Bhaban and made sure the investigation went exactly where they wanted it: into a dead end.
The Chittagong Arms Haul: Intelligence Agencies Smuggled Weapons for Terrorists
If you think the intelligence agencies’ role in the grenade attack was bad, wait until you hear about the arms haul.
On the night of April 1, 2004, police and Coast Guard, acting on a tip-off, interrupted the loading of weapons onto ten trucks at the Chittagong Urea Fertilizer Limited (CUFL) jetty on the Karnaphuli River. What they found was the largest arms cache ever seized in Bangladesh’s history:
- 4,930 sophisticated firearms
- 27,020 grenades
- 840 rocket launchers
- 300 rockets
- 2,000 grenade launching tubes
- 6,392 magazines
- 1,140,520 rounds of ammunition
This was not a criminal smuggling operation. This was a state-level intelligence operation. And the evidence proves it.
Two accused — Md Hafizur Rahman and Din Mohammad — submitted confessional statements to the Metropolitan Magistrate on March 2, 2009, stating that the arms were being smuggled under the direct supervision of ULFA leader Paresh Baruah and that “numerous men associated with the BNP-led government” — including members of parliament, government officials, and leaders of National Security Intelligence (NSI) and DGFI — were aware of the operation.
Not just aware. Involved.
The very agencies tasked with preventing weapons from reaching insurgents were facilitating the flow of those weapons. NSI and DGFI officers knew that 27,020 grenades — enough to arm a small war — were being loaded onto trucks at a government jetty. And they did nothing to stop it. Because they were part of it.
Among those charged in the case were:
- Lutfozzaman Babar — State Minister for Home Affairs
- Major General Rezzakul Haider Chowdhury — former DG of NSI (yes, the same man later sentenced to death for the grenade attack)
- Brigadier General Abdur Rahim — former DG of NSI (also sentenced to death for the grenade attack)
- Wing Commander Shahabuddin Ahmed — former NSI director
Two of the men who planned the grenade attack — Rezzakul Haider Chowdhury and Abdur Rahim — were also involved in the arms smuggling operation. The same intelligence chiefs who helped plan the assassination of the opposition leader were simultaneously allowing one of the largest weapons shipments in South Asian history to pass through a government facility.
And just like the grenade attack, the arms haul case ended in acquittal. On December 18, 2024, the High Court acquitted Babar and five others. On January 14, 2025, the High Court acquitted them in the Arms Act case as well. Paresh Baruah’s death sentence was reduced to 14 years. Four others had their sentences reduced to 10 years.
The weapons were intended for ULFA — the United Liberation Front of Asom — an insurgent group fighting for Assam’s independence from India. Indian intelligence confirmed the connection. A retired Indian intelligence officer, Major General Gaganjit Singh, confirmed the arms were “meant not only for ULFA but also for a few other rebel groups in India’s Northeast to destabilize the country.”
So Bangladesh’s intelligence agencies were not just failing to prevent terrorism. They were actively facilitating the arming of insurgent groups in a neighboring country, using government facilities and state resources to do it. This is the kind of thing that starts wars. And it happened under the watch of DGFI and NSI.
The DGFI Torture House: When Intelligence Agencies Become Instruments of Terror
But the intelligence agencies didn’t just facilitate attacks and smuggle weapons. They also operated what can only be described as a torture program against domestic political opponents.
DGFI’s record during the BNP era (2001-2006) is one of systematic political persecution. The agency was used to surveil, intimidate, detain, and torture members of the political opposition, journalists, and anyone who posed a threat to the ruling party’s grip on power.
During Operation Clean Heart (October 2002 – January 2003), the military-intelligence apparatus was deployed against civilians with devastating results. Over 11,000 people were arrested. At least 44 people died in custody — and those are the official numbers; Human Rights Watch documented at least 60 extrajudicial killings. The youngest victim was 16 years old. The oldest was 73.
When the operation ended, the BNP government passed the Joint Drive Indemnity Ordinance — a law that gave complete legal immunity to every security personnel member who participated. They killed dozens of people in custody, and then they made it illegal to investigate those deaths. The High Court eventually struck down the ordinance in November 2015, but by then, over a decade had passed and the evidence had gone cold.
DGFI was also deeply involved in the creation and operation of RAB — the Rapid Action Battalion. Formed in 2004, RAB was drawn from the military, police, and intelligence services. By October 2006, RAB had killed 367 people in “crossfire” incidents. By March 2010, the kill count had reached 622. And DGFI officers were embedded in RAB’s operations, providing intelligence for targets and then helping to cover up the killings.
The United States Treasury Department eventually imposed Global Magnitsky sanctions on RAB and seven current and former officers on December 10, 2021, citing “serious human rights violations” including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and torture. Following the sanctions, extrajudicial killings and disappearances “dropped dramatically” — which tells you everything you need to know about how dependent these abuses were on US-enabled intelligence cooperation.
The WikiLeaks Cables: What American Diplomats Saw
We don’t have to rely solely on Bangladeshi sources to understand what was happening. The US Embassy in Dhaka was watching. And what they saw — and documented in classified cables that were later released by WikiLeaks — confirms the worst.
A 2005 US diplomatic cable described Tarique Rahman as a “symbol of kleptocratic government” and coined the moniker “Dark Prince” for his involvement in what the cable called “violent politics.” But the cables also documented the broader intelligence apparatus.
The cables noted that DGFI and NSI were being used as political instruments rather than national security agencies. Intelligence resources that should have been directed at genuine threats — militant groups like JMB and HuJI, which were bombing the country with impunity — were instead redirected toward surveilling opposition politicians, intimidating journalists, and protecting the business interests of the ruling family and its associates.
This is not just a Bangladeshi problem. Intelligence agencies being captured by ruling parties is a pattern seen in authoritarian states around the world. What makes Bangladesh’s case particularly egregious is the scale of the capture and the consequences it produced: a grenade attack on the opposition, the largest arms smuggling operation in the country’s history, a systematic cover-up, and a trail of bodies that stretches across every branch of the security apparatus.
The Pattern: How Intelligence Capture Works
Here is what the evidence shows, and it is crucial to understand this as a system, not a series of isolated incidents:
Step 1: Appoint loyalists. The BNP government appointed intelligence chiefs who were personally loyal to the ruling party, not to the nation. Rezzakul Haider Chowdhury (DGFI) and Abdur Rahim (NSI) were not career intelligence professionals chosen for their competence. They were political appointees who owed their positions to the ruling family.
Step 2: Redirect resources. Intelligence agencies that should have been monitoring terrorist threats were instead monitoring opposition politicians, journalists, and civil society. The same agencies that failed to prevent the August 21 grenade attack and the August 17 JMB bombings were fully resourced when it came to tracking Awami League activities.
Step 3: Facilitate operations. When the ruling party needed something done — a grenade attack, an arms shipment, a cover-up — the intelligence agencies provided the logistical support, the security clearances, and the operational cover.
Step 4: Destroy evidence. When operations went wrong or attracted public attention, the same agencies destroyed evidence, fabricated alternative narratives, and tortured innocents into false confessions.
Step 5: Protect the guilty. And when the courts eventually caught up — as they did in 2018 with the grenade attack verdicts — the intelligence chiefs who had been convicted were eventually acquitted by a judiciary that now answers to the same party they once served.
This is the five-step playbook for intelligence capture. And it worked. For five years, between 2001 and 2006, Bangladesh’s intelligence agencies operated as an extension of the BNP-Jamaat coalition. They were not protecting the country. They were protecting the ruling party. And the country paid the price.
The Aftermath: What the Caretaker Government Found
When the caretaker government took over on January 11, 2007 — the date that BNP now calls a “dark chapter” — one of their first actions was to investigate the intelligence agencies.
What they found was devastating. The CID, now operating without political interference, launched fresh investigations into the grenade attack and the arms haul. Mufti Hannan, who had been in BNP custody since 2005 but had never been linked to the August 21 case, finally confessed. The real perpetrators were identified. The “Joj Mia” fabrication was exposed.
The caretaker government also arrested Lutfozzaman Babar on charges of illegal firearms possession. They detained Tarique Rahman. They filed cases against Shamim Iskander. They initiated investigations that would eventually produce the 2018 verdicts — verdicts that established, in a court of law, that Bangladesh’s intelligence chiefs had helped plan a grenade attack on the opposition.
And now? Every single one of those convictions has been overturned. Every single one of those cases has been acquitted. The intelligence chiefs who planned the attack walk free. The State Minister who facilitated it is a free man. And the “Dark Prince” who sat at the center of it all — whose political office was the meeting place, whose intelligence chiefs were the facilitators, whose party was the beneficiary — is now the Prime Minister of Bangladesh.
The Current Threat: Intelligence Agencies Under BNP 2.0
Here is what should terrify you.
The BNP is back in power. The same party that captured DGFI and NSI between 2001 and 2006 now controls them again. The same institutional vulnerabilities exist. The same patterns of political appointments, resource redirection, and operational facilitation are possible — and, given the track record, probable.
Between 2001 and 2006, we saw what happens when intelligence agencies serve a party instead of a nation:
- They help plan attacks on the opposition
- They facilitate weapons smuggling through government facilities
- They fabricate evidence to protect the guilty
- They torture innocents into false confessions
- They cover up crime scenes with detergent
- They destroy recovered grenades rather than preserve them
- They receive indemnity laws that make their crimes legal
And when they are finally caught, the courts — now also under the ruling party’s influence — acquit every single one of them.
The institutions that are supposed to provide checks and balances — the intelligence agencies, the police, the judiciary — have all been captured at least once by the BNP. The same party is now in power. The same family is running the government. The same apparatus of control is being rebuilt.
There is no reason to believe it will be different this time. There is no structural reform that has been implemented. No independent oversight mechanism that has been created. No legal safeguard that prevents the next set of intelligence chiefs from being appointed for their loyalty rather than their competence.
DGFI and NSI were weapons once. They can be weapons again.
What International Observers Said
The international community was not silent during this period. They documented everything. And their documentation confirms the intelligence capture thesis.
Human Rights Watch documented the extrajudicial killings and the use of intelligence agencies for political persecution in multiple reports, including “Judge, Jury, and Executioner” (2006) and “Crossfire” (2011).
The International Crisis Group noted in its reports that the BNP-led coalition government “did not target radical Islamist groups” and that Bangladesh’s political mainstream “has either deliberately used it [JMB] for narrow political ends.” The intelligence agencies, rather than investigating the growing JMB threat, were redirecting resources toward political surveillance.
Amnesty International documented the use of torture by intelligence and security agencies, including the torture of Joj Mia and others into false confessions.
The US State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report documented the post-election violence against minorities in 2001, noting that “at least 10 Hindu women were raped and a number of Hindu homes were looted by low-level BNP workers” — violence that intelligence agencies should have prevented but instead facilitated through inaction and complicity.
None of this is disputed. None of this is speculation. This is the documented record of international organizations, foreign governments, and Bangladeshi courts.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
Let me give you the numbers one more time, because they tell the story that no amount of political spin can erase:
- 2 — the number of intelligence agency chiefs (DGFI and NSI) who participated in planning the August 21 grenade attack
- 13 — the number of military-grade grenades thrown into a crowd of 20,000 people with intelligence agency facilitation
- 24 — the number of people killed in that attack
- 500+ — the number of people injured
- 27,020 — the number of grenades smuggled through a government jetty with intelligence agency knowledge
- 4,930 — the number of firearms in the same shipment
- 1,140,520 — the number of rounds of ammunition
- 44+ — the number of people who died in custody during Operation Clean Heart, facilitated by military intelligence
- 367 — the number of people killed by RAB by October 2006, with DGFI officers embedded in operations
- 5 — the number of consecutive years Bangladesh ranked as the most corrupt country in the world while these intelligence agencies served the party instead of the nation
- 84 — the number of cases filed against Tarique Rahman, all now acquitted
- 0 — the number of intelligence officials held accountable for their role in facilitating the grenade attack, the arms haul, or the cover-up
Zero accountability. Zero consequences. Zero structural reform.
The spies who served the party are still out there. The agencies they controlled are still operating. And the party they served is back in power.
Why This Matters Now
You might think this is history. You might think that what happened between 2001 and 2006 cannot happen again. You would be wrong.
The institutional capture of DGFI and NSI was not a one-time event. It was a demonstration of how easily Bangladesh’s intelligence apparatus can be turned into a weapon of the ruling party. No structural reforms have been implemented since then. No independent oversight has been established. No legal safeguards prevent the next set of intelligence chiefs from being political appointees.
BNP was in power from 2001 to 2006. The intelligence agencies served the party. Then they were reformed — temporarily — under the caretaker government. Then Awami League was in power from 2009 to 2024, and the same institutional vulnerabilities existed. DGFI was accused of enforced disappearances, torture, and political surveillance under Awami League too. The difference is one of degree, not of kind.
And now BNP is back. The same party. The same family. The same intelligence apparatus. The same absence of safeguards.
The grenade attack was not an accident. The arms haul was not a failure of intelligence. The cover-up was not a coincidence. The “Joj Mia” fabrication was not an error. These were operations, carried out by professionals, directed by intelligence chiefs who were serving a political master rather than the nation.
Bangladesh’s intelligence agencies were designed to protect the country. Between 2001 and 2006, they were used to attack it. And the people who did it — the intelligence chiefs, the State Minister, the ruling family — have faced exactly zero consequences.
The next time someone tells you that 1/11 was a “dark chapter,” ask them about the five dark years that preceded it. The years when Bangladesh’s spies served the party, helped plan massacres, smuggled weapons, destroyed evidence, and tortured innocents. The years when the agencies that were supposed to protect the nation instead became its greatest threat.
The spies who served the party are still out there. And the party they served is back in power.
Bangladesh deserves to know.
Sources
- Speedy Trial Tribunal-1, Dhaka — Verdict on August 21 Grenade Attack Case (October 10, 2018): Sentenced Lutfozzaman Babar, Abdus Salam Pintu, Major General (Retd) Rezzakul Haider Chowdhury, and Brigadier General (Retd) Abdur Rahim to death; Tarique Rahman and Harris Chowdhury to life imprisonment
- Confessional statement of Mufti Abdul Hannan (November 2007, 2011)
- Confessional statements of Md Hafizur Rahman and Din Mohammad — Metropolitan Magistrate (March 2, 2009)
- Human Rights Watch — “Judge, Jury, and Executioner: Torture and Extrajudicial Killings by Bangladesh’s Elite Security Force” (December 2006)
- Human Rights Watch — “Crossfire: Continued Human Rights Abuses by Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion” (May 2011)
- International Crisis Group — Asia Report No. 121: “Bangladesh Today” (October 2006)
- International Crisis Group — Asia Report No. 187: “The Threat from Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh” (March 2010)
- International Crisis Group — Asia Report No. 277 (April 2016)
- US Embassy Cable (2005) — Released by WikiLeaks: Tarique Rahman described as “symbol of kleptocratic government” and “Dark Prince”
- US Treasury Department — Global Magnitsky Sanctions on RAB (December 10, 2021)
- Amnesty International — “Bangladesh: Attacks on members of the Hindu minority” (AI Index: ASA 13/006/2001, December 2001)
- Transparency International — Corruption Perceptions Index (2001-2005)
- High Court of Bangladesh — Acquittal of grenade attack accused (December 1, 2024)
- High Court of Bangladesh — Acquittal of arms haul accused (December 18, 2024; January 14, 2025)
- High Court of Bangladesh — Joint Drive Indemnity Ordinance declared illegal (November 2015)
- The Daily Star — Coverage of Shamsunnahar Hall raid, Operation Clean Heart, arms haul, and grenade attack (2002-2025)
- Dhaka Tribune — Coverage of Shamim Iskander, acquittals, and current political developments (2014-2026)
- India Today — Confirmed ULFA connection with ex-Indian intelligence officer testimony (February 2023)