October 16, 2002 — The Operation Begins
The BNP government called it “Operation Clean Heart.” The name suggested purification — a surgical strike against crime, a restoration of order. What it delivered was 86 days of state-sanctioned terror.
Over 40,000 security personnel — 24,023 army, 339 navy, plus police, Ansar, and BDR — flooded the streets of Bangladesh. They arrested 11,245 people. They seized 2,028 firearms. And they killed at least 44 people in custody.
The government’s official position was that 12 people died — all of “heart attacks.”
“The DMP Commissioner gave shoot-at-sight orders. This is not law enforcement. This is a license to kill.” — Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch
The Dead: Not Criminals — Citizens
The 44 named victims of Operation Clean Heart were not the dangerous criminals the government claimed to be hunting. They were farmers and students, a 16-year-old political activist and a 73-year-old man, a rickshaw puller and an assistant film director, businessmen and laborers. They were Awami League supporters and BNP activists alike — the operation targeted political opponents as ruthlessly as it targeted ordinary citizens.
Shafiqul Islam, age 16 — A Jatiyotabadi Chhatra Dal activist, shot during a protest in Bogra. Sixteen years old. A child, killed by the state for belonging to a political organization.
Haji Abul Kashem, age 73 — The oldest known victim. Died in Tangail General Hospital. A seventy-three-year-old man, dead after being taken into military custody. The official cause: “heart attack.”
Nabi Hossain Khan, age 50 — A rickshaw puller in Narsinghdi. Detained by the army. Found dead in a pond. A man who spent his days pulling a rickshaw through the streets, found floating in water after soldiers took him away. His family was told he had drowned. They were not permitted an independent autopsy.
Rashedul Hasan, age 35 — An assistant film director. Detained on November 7. Dead shortly after. A man who told stories for a living, silenced forever in military custody.
These are not statistics. These are names. These are people with families who waited for them to come home and received bodies instead.
The Pattern: Detain, Kill, Call It Natural Causes
The cause of death in virtually every case was listed as “heart attack,” “cardiac arrest,” or “natural causes.” This was not a medical finding. It was a political cover story — one so transparent that even the government’s own supporters privately acknowledged it was fiction.
The World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) documented the pattern in urgent interventions:
“There is a risk of impunity. The deaths in custody must be independently investigated, and those responsible must be held accountable.”
The OMCT was ignored. Human Rights Watch was ignored. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed “concern over the indemnity ordinance” — and was ignored. The BNP government had no intention of investigating itself.
Political Targeting: The Operation’s Real Purpose
Operation Clean Heart was never primarily about crime. The evidence for its political nature is overwhelming:
Awami League leader Saber Hossain Chowdhury was detained during the operation. Sheikh Fazlul Karim Selim, a cousin of Sheikh Hasina, was detained. The army raided the Awami League office and seized documents — not weapons, not contraband, documents.
DMP Commissioner Ashraful Huda issued shoot-at-sight orders in Dhaka. Not “arrest on sight.” Not “use necessary force.” Shoot at sight. This was a battlefield directive issued against the civilian population of a democracy.
Brad Adams of Human Rights Watch condemned the orders directly. The BNP government’s response was to extend the operation.
The Indemnity Act: Legalizing Murder
On January 9, 2003 — the same day Operation Clean Heart officially ended — the BNP government passed the Joint Drive Indemnity Ordinance. On February 24, 2003, it was approved in parliament.
The law granted complete immunity from prosecution to all security personnel who participated in the operation. The language was sweeping: immunity from prosecution for “any casualty, damage to life and property, violation” during the operation.
This was not an oversight. This was not bureaucratic caution. This was the BNP government looking at 44 dead citizens and deciding that the appropriate response was to make it illegal to hold anyone accountable for their deaths.
“The indemnity ordinance is an affront to the rule of law. It tells security forces they can kill with impunity, and it tells victims’ families that justice is not available to them.” — Sultana Kamal, prominent human rights activist
Justice Shamsuddin Chowdhury Manik criticized both the operation and the indemnity ordinance in the strongest terms. His criticism, like all others, was disregarded.
Justice, Delayed but Not Denied
It took nine years for the legal challenge to begin. On June 14, 2012, lawyer Z.I. Khan Panna filed a petition against the ordinance. On July 29, 2012, the High Court asked the government to explain why it should not declare the ordinance illegal and order Tk 1 billion in compensation to victims’ families.
On November 2015, the High Court declared the indemnity ordinance illegal and scrapped it. The verdict was delivered by Justice Moyeenul Islam Chowdhury and Justice Ashraful Kamal.
The court confirmed what everyone already knew: a government cannot legalize murder. A parliament cannot vote away the right to life. The Indemnity Act was a legal fiction from the beginning — a shield built to protect killers from the consequences of their actions.
But the court victory was incomplete. The 44 people who died in custody are still dead. Their families received no meaningful compensation. No individual has been held criminally responsible for a single one of the 44 deaths. The indemnity ordinance is gone, but the impunity it was designed to protect remains intact.
From Operation Clean Heart to RAB
Operation Clean Heart ended in January 2003. The Indemnity Act was passed the same day. And then, in 2004, the BNP government created the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) — a permanent, institutionalized version of the same logic.
RAB was formed from the same security forces that carried out Operation Clean Heart. It employed the same tactics: extrajudicial killing, arbitrary detention, torture in custody. The only difference was that RAB didn’t need an indemnity law — it operated with de facto impunity from the start.
Under BNP rule (2004-2006), RAB killed at least 680 people. The “crossfire” killings became so routine that Bangla acquired a new euphemism: “crossfire-e mrito” — killed in crossfire — meaning murdered by the state.
Operation Clean Heart was not an aberration. It was a prototype. The BNP government tested whether Bangladesh would accept state-sponsored murder. When the answer was yes — when the Indemnity Act passed, when no one was prosecuted, when the international community issued condemnations and moved on — they created a permanent killing machine.
The Names We Must Not Forget
This article names four of the 44 victims. The full list of named individuals is documented by the World Organisation Against Torture, Human Rights Watch, and Bangladeshi human rights organizations. Every name on that list represents a person who was alive before BNP’s soldiers took them into custody and dead after.
The BNP government called them “heart attacks.” The courts later called the Indemnity Act illegal. History will call them what they were: murders, committed by the state, protected by the government, and erased from accountability by a law that should never have existed.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Bangladesh is living that repetition. The same party that created Operation Clean Heart, passed the Indemnity Act, and birthed RAB is now back in power. The same institutions that failed to hold anyone accountable for 44 deaths are now dismantling the few convictions that were achieved.
The 44 did not die of heart attacks. They died because a government decided that their lives were expendable. The least we can do is remember their names.
Sources
- Human Rights Watch: “Judge, Jury, and Executioner” — Torture and Extrajudicial Killings by Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion (2006)
- OMCT (World Organisation Against Torture): Urgent Interventions on Operation Clean Heart deaths and torture (2002-2003)
- UN OHCHR: Concern over Indemnity Ordinance (2003)
- High Court of Bangladesh: Declaration of Indemnity Ordinance as illegal (November 2015), Justice Moyeenul Islam Chowdhury and Justice Ashraful Kamal
- Petition by Z.I. Khan Panna against Joint Drive Indemnity Ordinance (June 14, 2012)
- Bangladesh Untold: RAB — Bangladesh’s Elite Death Squad, 600+ Killed in Crossfire Under State Protection
- Bangladesh Untold: The Shamsunnahar Hall Raid — Babar Ordered It, Anwarullah Took the Fall
- Bangladesh Untold: Operation Clean Heart — 44 Deaths in Custody, 11,000 Arrests, 0 Convictions
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