The Theatre of Justice and the Politics of Evasion
By Khandaker A. Raquib
A recent interview published by Netra News with the brother of Shaheed Taim [killed in a police “crossfire” in Jatrabari] has generated deep unease. This unease is not only about the tragic killing itself but also about the patterned evasions embedded in the judicial process.
On 12 November 2024, the International Crimes Tribunal issued arrest warrants against multiple accused officers. Yet, by 15 November, every accused remained “active” in their posts until they quietly disappeared. The police, the very institution tasked with executing the arrests, stood indifferent. The result was predictable: the accused escaped.
This was no isolated incident. In at least ten separate cases, the same pattern unfolded. In Chankharpul, police officer Akhtar, who gave direct shooting orders, remained in service until late January before vanishing immediately after the warrant. Another accused, alleged to have forcibly disappeared over one hundred individuals at the Bogura Police Lines, absconded from his duty station in Barishal and has remained at large since February. The officer implicated in the killing of Shaheed Nafiz disappeared from the Sarada Police Academy. Even when a lower-ranking Officer-in-Charge in Baniachong was arrested, his superior Assistant Commissioner fled the very same night.
Here lies the structural dilemma: the tribunal has the jurisdiction to issue warrants, but the power to arrest remains with the police. This arrangement produces a predictable outcome: constables and sub-inspectors, expendable at the lowest rungs, are arrested, tried, and punished, while high-ranking officers disappear with impunity. In many cases, it is precisely these senior officers who pass along intelligence that enables the escapes.
The pattern mirrors another sphere: army officers accused in disappearance cases. Until warrants were issued, most were inside cantonments: safe, shielded, traceable. After warrants, they too managed to slip away.
These practices reveal a stratified field of accountability. Law, though presented as impartial, is selectively enacted: it reaches the vulnerable but retreats from the powerful. The spectacle of justice is maintained: families witness trials of some accused, but never those at the apex. Legal anthropologists call this differentiated sovereignty: a regime where law binds unequally, reinforcing hierarchies rather than dismantling them.
For victims’ families, this is not merely legal betrayal but prolonged trauma. Each escape is not just the flight of an accused, but a state-delivered reminder that truth and justice are rationed. Law here operates as both promise and wound: offering recognition while reproducing dispossession.
Until accountability extends to the highest echelons: to those who command rather than merely those who obey, the trials risk becoming rituals of partial justice. In such rituals, the theatre of legality conceals the politics of evasion.
