Photojournalist Badal Das, who had been reported missing after police repeatedly failed to acknowledge that he was in their custody, has been found in jail, with the Detective Branch eventually confirming that its officers had detained him earlier.
The sequence of events raises serious questions about what happened to Das between his disappearance and the authorities’ eventual acknowledgment of his detention. His family and colleagues had been searching for him while police publicly treated him as a missing person, even though the Detective Branch now says its own officers had taken him into custody.
Das, 50, a photojournalist with the Daily Nabachetona, had been missing since Monday, Sept. 28. His friend and roommate, photojournalist Sujit Sheikh Babu, subsequently filed a General Diary with Paltan Model Police Station seeking his whereabouts.
After Das disappeared, colleagues found his mobile phone in his room. An unidentified caller later contacted Babu and told him that Das was in the custody of the Detective Branch, according to accounts from his colleagues.
Babu then contacted Motijheel Police Station and the DB office several times in an effort to locate him. Police, however, did not acknowledge that Das had been detained, and his colleagues were unable to find him at the DB office. Attempts to call back the number from which the purported DB call had been made were unsuccessful because the phone was switched off.
Paltan Model Police Station Officer-in-Charge Ariful Alam subsequently confirmed that a GD had been filed over Das’ disappearance and said police were working to determine his whereabouts.
By then, however, Das was already in police custody, according to the account later provided by the Detective Branch.
On Wednesday night, Sept. 30, DMP Detective Branch Additional Commissioner Md Shafiqul Islam acknowledged that DB officers had detained Das along with six or seven other people in the Motijheel area on Tuesday.
Police alleged that Das and the others had been caught with marijuana. They were subsequently taken before a magistrate and sent to jail.
The allegation against Das remains the police account of the circumstances of his detention. The available reports do not establish independently whether marijuana was recovered from him.
None of Badal’s colleagues or close associates are aware of him ever using marijuana. They say they have never seen him use the drug or engage in any criminal activity. His disappearance followed by his eventual arrest in a marijuana case is being viewed as a tactic to instill fear among journalists and intimidate the profession as a whole.
The timeline means that for a period after Das was taken into DB custody, his family, colleagues and roommate were unable to establish his whereabouts through the police, despite specifically approaching police and the DB after being told that he was in DB custody.
That sequence bears the defining characteristics of an enforced disappearance: a person is deprived of liberty by state agents, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the detention or disclose the person’s fate or whereabouts, placing the person outside the protection of the law.
In Das’ case, the period of undisclosed detention ended when authorities acknowledged that the DB had detained him and that he had subsequently been sent to jail. The acknowledgment came only after reports of his disappearance and the alleged DB custody began appearing publicly.
Police initially did not acknowledge his detention when his colleagues sought information, while the DB later confirmed that its officers had detained him.
The case also raises questions about the legal process followed immediately after his detention, including precisely when he was taken into custody, where he was held before being produced before a magistrate, when his family was formally informed and under what legal provision the magistrate ordered his imprisonment.
Das is the son of Basu Deb Das of Patuakhali Sadar. He had been living at the Shishu Kalyan Parishad building in the Gulistan area of Dhaka.
His whereabouts are no longer unknown. But the disclosure that he had been in state custody while police did not acknowledge that custody has shifted the central question from where the photojournalist was to why his detention was not disclosed when his family and colleagues were searching for him.
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