The suspicious death of senior journalist Ali Mahmud, city editor of the pro-BNP Daily Dinkal and a member of the party’s media cell, reeks of the foul play that’s become routine in Bangladesh’s escalating war on independent and dissenting voices.
His body was discovered in a toilet of the National Press Club on Tuesday morning, with reports of blood from his nose and mouthโhardly the clean picture of a simple “heart attack” or “stroke” that police are so quick to peddle.
The door had to be broken open after he failed to emerge, yet authorities defer to the family’s decision on an autopsy? How convenientโespecially when the family might be intimidated or complicit in burying the truth.
This tragedy unfolded after Tarique Rahman, the BNP chairman and publisher and acting editor of Dinkal, paid a visit to the newspaper’s office on February 8.
Coincidence? Hardly.
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The timing screams suspicion: a high-profile opposition figure drops by, and suddenly a key editorial figureโtied to the same partyโends up dead in suspicious circumstances. What exactly transpired during that visit? What pressure, threats, or worse were applied behind closed doors? The public demands answers, not the lame excuses from a police force that seems eager to label every inconvenient death “natural.”
This isn’t an isolated incidentโit’s part of a vicious, ongoing persecution of journalists that has turned Bangladesh into a graveyard for press freedom since August 2024. Over a dozen suspicious deaths, hundreds of assaults and intimidations by BNP, Jamaat, and pro-regime student mobs, revocation of nearly 200 accreditation cards, dismissal of over 1,000 journalists, and the illegal occupation or forced shutdown of around 20 newspapers and TV channels. The pattern is clear: silence critics, punish perceived loyalists of the old regime, and install puppets aligned with the new power brokers.
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Rights activists are right to demand an impartial, transparent investigationโbut let’s be real: in today’s Bangladesh, “impartial” is a joke when the perpetrators often wear the badge of the ruling coalition or its affiliates.
The authorities’ rush to call this a heart attack, without mandatory autopsy and full forensic scrutiny, only fuels the belief that this was no accident.
Activists say the relentless harassment, murders, and intimidation of journalists must stop. Those responsibleโwhether political cadres, mob enforcers, or figures in high placesโmust face justice, not protection. Until then, every suspicious death like Ali Mahmud’s stands as a damning indictment of a system that fears truth more than anything else. The blood on the press club’s floor is on the hands of those who allow this terror to continue unchecked.
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