¶¶Òõ¾«Æ·

IN A country where electricity flickers, the price of essentials keeps flirting with the absurd and the news cycle changes faster than the weather, who really has the luxury of waiting for courtrooms, lawyers and the ponderous machinery of law? Yes, it is Bangladesh, where mob lynching appears to have emerged as the fastest-growing sector of our informal justice system.

According to Ain o Salish Kendra, a human rights organisation, 161 people were lynched between August 2024 and April 2025. That’s not a typo. 161. Which is roughly one lynching every 1.6 days. No, these aren’t statistics from some dark patch of history. These are fresh, blood-soaked numbers. Real men. Real deaths. Real silence.

Of these, 96 occurred in just the last five months of 2024. Another 65 in the first four months of this year. To put this in context, 128 people were lynched in 2024. The year before that? Just 51. In 2022? A gentle 36. A mere 28 in 2021. And 35 in 2020, which seems, in hindsight, like a more civilised time — despite the pandemic, economic collapse, and political gridlock. But apparently, 2024 was the breakout year for this DIY justice phenomenon.

Naturally, Dhaka leads the charts — because if you are going to set societal records, it may as well be from the capital. Of the 161 recent lynching deaths, 74 occurred in Dhaka Division alone. The same division that houses our courts, parliament, and the Supreme Court. The irony? Delicious. Or disturbing. Depending on whether you’re still capable of being disturbed.

The others died in regions more modestly enthusiastic about extrajudicial murder: 24 in Chittagong, 16 each in Rajshahi and Barisal, 13 in Khulna, 5 in Mymensingh, and 5 in Sylhet. Some were suspected drug dealers. Others were petty thieves. Some were accused of nothing at all, like Taslima Begum Renu, beaten to death outside a school in 2019 because someone claimed she was a child abductor.

Hundreds watched. Some filmed. Few intervened. Of course, when the nation was still digesting Renu’s killing, we said ‘Never again.’ And now, years later, here we are — again and again and again.

Two more bodies just last week in Darussalam, Dhaka. Young men, in their twenties. The police claim they were drug dealers, carrying arms, of course. And once that label is out, no further explanation is required. The public doesn’t wait for warrants. They act. There was an anti-drug raid in the area a day earlier. Tempers flared. Knives came out. Allegedly, the deceased tried to harass some locals. Several hundred people responded with the only language they know: fists, boots and bamboo sticks.

And what if they didn’t? What if they weren’t armed? What if the drugs weren’t theirs? What if it was just a misunderstanding? What if…?

Too late. That’s not how mob justice works. It’s fast food justice: instantly delivered, barely cooked and poisonous.

A renowned criminologist of our country, in a rare burst of honesty, noted that lynching incidents are not only increasing — they are becoming ‘difficult to control.’ Translation: we have lost the plot. Even more damning, he adds that some of these killings are no longer spontaneous, but planned. Coordinated, cold-blooded. And if that doesn’t frighten you, congratulations — you are either the mob, or you have accepted that violence is our new social contract.

American criminologist Dr David Garland once wrote, ‘A society that resorts too readily to penal violence reveals the frailty of its institutions and the weakness of its commitment to democratic values.’ If that’s true, we have made a bonfire of both.

Mob lynching flourishes in a climate where the public no longer trusts the police or judiciary, where the courts are perceived to be slow, corrupt or politically captured, where people believe they must ‘handle it themselves.’ In this decaying trust ecosystem, everyone is both a suspect and a potential executioner.

Dr Philip Zimbardo — of Stanford Prison Experiment fame — warned that anonymity and group behaviour can turn ordinary people into monsters. ‘When we deindividuate, we lose our sense of personal responsibility. We act as the group acts.’ The Bangladeshi mob today isn’t a deviation from human nature — it’s a reflection of it, when structures of accountability collapse.

Social psychologist Muzafer Sherif would call this ‘realistic conflict theory.’ Competing groups, limited resources, heightened stress: a recipe for escalating aggression. And Bangladesh, with its volatile politics, crumbling economy and galloping inequality, has become the perfect laboratory.

Political instability is the final accelerant. Lynching incidents spike during periods of unrest. The state is too busy arresting past regime’s leaders or attending diplomatic summits. The street, meanwhile, has its own agenda.

And what happens when mobs are allowed to continue unchecked? They start acquiring moral legitimacy. Vigilantes become ‘protectors.’ Killers become ‘concerned citizens.’ And soon, we start to believe the lie that perhaps this is all necessary. That maybe the police can’t cope. That maybe this is justice.

Of course, the state occasionally reacts with a press briefing here and a condolence message there. Perhaps even a promise of investigation, like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound. But real action? Show me the convictions. Name the cases where the lynch mob was tried and sentenced. We have digitised everything from utility bills to vaccine appointments, but the only justice most lynching victims receive is a line in a spreadsheet.

Ask the families. The mothers and the children. Ask the unnamed man’s mother, if the police ever bother to find her. Ask them what justice looks like. If it feels like something. Or if it just fades into the noise.

The saddest part of this escalating crisis is that the public no longer gasps. We scroll past headlines that say ‘Mob kills two’ the same way we scroll past cricket scores. Our shock capacity has been fried. And that’s the most dangerous point for any society — the point when atrocity becomes routine.

Even now, as you read this, there is likely a crowd forming somewhere. A man accused, a voice yelling ‘thief’, another yelling ‘drug dealer’ and no one waiting for proof. A boot landing, a rod swinging, a life leaving and 200 smartphones filming.

We used to be horrified. Now we just forward the videos.

We have made peace with becoming executioners, not with our own hands, but certainly with our silence, our indifference and our shrugs. We have created a country where guilt is determined by rumour and punishment by rage.

Martin Luther King Jr once warned, ‘The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.’ And we, the good people, are increasingly silent.

This silence is our complicity. This indifference is our endorsement. We are spectators of our own collapse, standing by as the social contract is rewritten in blood and fear.

One day, someone you love might be in the wrong place at the wrong time. A borrowed phone. A mistaken identity. A mob, already angry. And then, you will scream for justice. And it will sound a lot like a man screaming while being beaten — ignored by hundreds.

So what now? Do we keep counting? Do we add another 161 names to a growing list, etched not in law books but in concrete and flesh? Or do we speak, act, demand?

Until then, carry your NID card. Don’t wear the wrong clothes. Don’t ask questions. Don’t make eye contact. And never, ever look suspicious. Because here in Bangladesh, suspicion is a death sentence.

Ìý

HM Nazmul Alam is an academic, journalist and political analyst.