The USA and India were closely linked with the clandestine, and illegal, operation of the DGFI, the commission on enforced disappearance revealed in a recent report.
The report, titled "Unfolding the Truth: A structural diagnosis of enforced disappearance in Bangladesh", published on 4 June, laid bare the level of foreign interference in the DGFI.
"The Awami League's domestic counter-terror narrative was mirrored in bilateral security cooperation with India. This relationship extended beyond rhetoric and translated into tangible joint operations, cross-border coordination, and illegal renditions," the report, a copy of which has been obtained by Dhaka Stream, said.
Citing testimonies, the report described victims' accounts of being handed over from Indian custody to Bangladeshi intelligence, and vice versa.
"In one instance, the individual was first picked up in India by Indian authorities. DGFI then sent a set of questions to Indian intelligence, who posed them to the captive and relayed the responses back. This sequence of activity has been confirmed to us through sources within DGFI."
In a damning victim testimony, published in full, the individual recalled, "At night, around 1:30am, [the Indian officers] first blindfolded me. There were handcuffs…Then they took me out of the car after 10 minutes. After taking me out, I realized that they were handing me over."
'Will send you to India'
Another victim – who the commission confirmed with RAB sources was kept imprisoned in two facilities run by RAB intelligence – described being transferred from Bangladesh to India where, afterwards, he was interrogated for posting video content on Indian Muslims.
"They [RAB] kept me there [at one of the two facilities] for three months. One day, they took me back to the place where they had kept me before. They said, 'There are many big intelligence agencies, they will take you from us and throw you in the river. You have been with us for so long, for your own good, we want to keep you outside the country for a while,'" the victim told the commission according to its report.
He also recalled being threatened with being sent to India, which came true the day after the threat was issued.
"They took me in a Hiace car, blindfolded. ... Two men came to the border. They said, 'They will let you cross. After that, you will stay there, and we will bring you back..."
He said he was made to cross a river, left on the road with most of his cash snatched from him. He then slept at a bus station before locals handed him over to police.
"They took me to the police station and interrogated me…Later, I told them everything."
He said they didn't believe him and he was sent to jail. Later, according to his testimony, people came from "Delhi Headquarters" and asked him about why he posted anti-India videos, especially those related to Kashmir.
The report concluded, "These accounts point to a pattern of informal, opaque, and bilateral intelligence cooperation between Bangladesh and India, involving cross-border transfers and joint interrogations of captives. The details above suggest that such cooperation was not always driven by exceptional security concerns; at times, it appears to have been triggered by surprisingly trivial reasons."
The Western nexus
Parallel to the India nexus, the Awami League also benefited from sustained Western cooperation under the banner of counterterrorism, the report said.
Citing senior officers, who confirmed this partnership, particularly with the United States, the report said such a nexus enabled the capacity building within Bangladesh's security sector.
One more damning testimony came from a victim who recalled being interrogated by two Americans while in DB custody.
"[While at the DB] two people from America came... They didn't just come to interrogate me, they brought many more people...They sat me down in front of those two Americans, and they gave me a form and said, 'We want you to sign this.'"
He recalled being handed a form with all his details, which also said he had a right to a lawyer.
When he informed the foreign interrogators that his sister was a lawyer, they told him that since they had no jurisdiction in Bangladesh, the piece of paper was just that: "a piece of paper".
They also asked him about how he spoke English so well, before concluding the interview in the end, the report said.
Another captive—whose detention in DGFI custody we have independently confirmed—recalled being interrogated by a foreigner.
He suspected the interrogator was an English-speaker, based on cues he picked up during the questioning, the report said.
"[After many days] the DGFI officer just said that there is a foreign guest,[and that I should] speak in English. Then I thought that he [the guest] was from India. So I spoke in Hindi to test him. He said, 'No, you have to speak in English.' ... For a long time, two-three hours, we went back and forth. I got quite scared," the victim told the commission.
He recalled being told the information he had furnished was useless.
"You have to lay the golden egg," he recalled being told by one of the interrogators.
"While as far as we know these foreign individuals did not engage in direct abuse, their presence gave legitimacy to a broader system of enforced detention. Their role appeared more symbolic— reinforcing state narratives and extracting appearances of procedural consent — than protective," the commission's report said.
It also cited the Human Rights Watch, which reported back in 2011, that "foreign governments, in particular the UK and the US, regard RAB as Bangladesh's most effective anti-terrorism force and have expressed strong interest in increasing cooperation with RAB."
This endorsement, echoed in diplomatic and security circles, lent significant political and material support to RAB over the following years – despite mounting evidence of extrajudicial killings, secret detentions, and enforced disappearances, the report said.
"The Awami League government, by framing itself as an indispensable bulwark against Islamist extremism, entered into what effectively became an authoritarian bargain: in exchange for visible alignment with global counterterrorism priorities, it received tacit tolerance or even active backing from international partners," it added.
Highlighting that some sanctions were eventually imposed in response to systemic abuses, these came only after years of complicity.
It further called for such arrangements and the broader security frameworks to be openly reassessed.
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