Bangladesh detains Hasina era former election chief

A Bangladesh court on Monday remanded in custody the former elections chief for his alleged role in rigging the vote in favour of now-ousted autocrat Sheikh Hasina.

KM Nurul Huda, 77, was ordered to be detained for four days while questioning continues, a day after a mob who smashed into his home and assaulted him eventually handed him to the police.

On Sunday, the powerful Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) filed a case against Huda and other former election commissioners it accuses of rigging past polls in favour of Hasina, whose 15 years in power ended in an mass uprising in August 2024.

Hours after the case was filed, a mob stormed Huda’s home in the capital Dhaka, and dragged him onto the street.

They put a garland of shoes around his neck and beat him up before handing him over to the police.

The interim government condemned the incident and urged people not to take the law into their own hands.

“Swooping on an accused and physically assaulting him is illegal, contrary to the rule of law, and a criminal offence,” the statement read.

Interim leader Muhammad Yunus has said elections will be held in early April 2026 — the first in the South Asian nation of around 170 million people since the student-led revolt ousted Hasina. Police put a helmet on Huda while taking him to the court for his protection. Human rights organisations also condemned the attack on Huda. “It was a complete violation of... the rule of law,” Abu Ahmed Faijul Kabir from the rights group Ain O Salish Kendra said in a statement.

Yunus’s government warned last month that political power struggles risked jeopardising gains that have been made, saying that holding elections by mid-2026 would give them time to overhaul democratic institutions.

Hasina’s rule saw widespread human rights abuses and her government was accused of politicising courts and the civil service, as well as staging lopsided elections. Hasina, 77, remains in self-imposed exile in India, where she fled after she was ousted last year.

She has defied orders to return to Dhaka to face charges amounting to crimes against humanity. Her trial in absentia continues.

In a separate development, a Bangladesh government-appointed commission investigating hundreds of disappearances by the security forces under Hasina on Monday warned that the same “culture of impunity” continues.

The Commission of Inquiry into Enforced Disappearances is probing abuses during the rule of Hasina, whose government was accused of widespread human rights abuses.

Agence France France-Presse