DHAKA: The path to credible elections in Bangladesh has long been paved with the promise of law and order.
Yet, since the ouster of Sheikh Hasina in 2024 and the installation of Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus at the helm of the interim government, that promise has withered into a hollow refrain.
The collapse of governance, the surge in mob violence, and the emboldening of radical groups have all but erased the conditions necessary for free and fair polls.
What remains is a fragile state, sinking further into chaos, while the interim authority presides over a nation that can no longer guarantee safety, stability, or even the minimum framework of democracy.
From ouster to disorder
The dramatic downfall of Hasina’s administration in August 2024 was heralded by some as a chance to reset the nation’s political landscape. Instead, the absence of strong institutions and the rise of factionalism created a vacuum that Yunus’s caretaker government has proven incapable of filling.
Rather than enforcing stability, the interim leadership has become a spectator to cascading disorder.
The warning signs were immediate. Violent protests swept across Dhaka and Chittagong in the weeks after Hasina’s resignation.
Law enforcement, demoralised and politically split, retreated from the streets. Islamist factions, emboldened by years of underground networking, staged open rallies.
By early 2025, the situation had worsened into systematic mob violence, with minority groups, secular voices, and political dissidents bearing the brunt of the breakdown.
Mob rule: A nation in freefall
The statistics are grim. In the year following Hasina’s fall, Bangladesh witnessed 637 lynchings, according to local rights groups and media tallies. From village markets to urban slums, mob justice has become the dominant mode of dispute resolution.
Often, rumours—ranging from alleged theft to blasphemy—have triggered frenzied killings in broad daylight. Police responses have been sporadic at best, complicit at worst, further undermining any trust in the state’s ability to safeguard its citizens.
In January 2025, the police themselves acknowledged the scale of violence, releasing a controversial report that sought to downplay the communal dimension.
Out of 1,769 attacks against minorities, authorities claimed that over 1,200 were “politically motivated” rather than religiously inspired, with only 20 classified as purely communal.
Minority leaders denounced the framing, arguing it was little more than bureaucratic whitewashing meant to mask the government’s paralysis.
The interim administration’s lack of follow-through—just 62 cases filed and 35 arrests—confirmed what critics had feared: justice had become optional.
Minorities pay the price
No community has been more exposed in this lawless environment than Bangladesh’s religious minorities. From Hindus and Buddhists to Ahmadis and Christians, the past year has brought unrelenting persecution.
In the first 330 days of Yunus’s interim government, watchdog groups documented 2,442 incidents of communal violence: temples burned, homes looted, women assaulted, men murdered.
In May 2025, a Hindu leader’s killing in Jashore sparked days of unchecked mob attacks on minority households. Villages were torched, families displaced, livelihoods destroyed. Victims pleaded for government intervention, only to be met with indifference.
A February 2025 UN report underscored the scope of the crisis, citing deliberate attacks on Hindus, Ahmadis, and indigenous communities during and after the upheaval of Hasina’s ouster.
The findings were damning: the interim government was not only failing to protect vulnerable groups, but in some cases appeared unwilling even to acknowledge their plight.
The streets as battlegrounds
Beyond communal violence, the broader political landscape has become inhospitable to dialogue.
Universities, once centres of debate, are dominated by Islamist student factions who silence secular voices with threats and intimidation. Media outlets self-censor, fearful of retribution from mobs or state actors.
In March 2025, thousands of members of the banned Hizb-ut-Tahrir marched through Dhaka, calling for the establishment of a caliphate. Police eventually fired tear gas and stun grenades, but the message was clear: radical voices are now able to mobilise with unprecedented boldness.
Meanwhile, women face escalating harassment. In early 2025, reports emerged of a university student being assaulted by supporters of a religious hardliner. When she attempted to press charges, she was met with mob threats, including chilling warnings of sexual violence.
These incidents not only reveal the erosion of law enforcement but also the cultural regression now emboldened by lawless conditions.
The mirage of elections
Against this backdrop, Yunus’s interim government continues to pledge elections. Yet elections require more than ballots and polling booths—they require trust in the institutions tasked with guaranteeing fairness. That trust has evaporated.
The lynchings, the unchecked mob violence, the persecution of minorities, and the empowerment of radicals have all created a climate where free and fair elections are impossible.
Candidates from minority backgrounds, or even those espousing secular politics, cannot campaign without fear of attack. Voters cannot be assured that their voices will be heard without intimidation. Polling officials cannot administer elections in areas where mobs dictate order.
International observers, too, have raised an alarm.
In July 2025, human rights organisations criticised Bangladesh’s worsening security climate, arguing that without immediate restoration of law and order, any electoral exercise would be a facade.
Yet the Yunus government continues to insist that elections remain on track, as though repetition can replace reality.
Yunus’s waning authority
Muhammad Yunus’s ascent was meant to symbolise a technocratic break from Bangladesh’s bitter political duopoly. Instead, his tenure has highlighted the limitations of moral authority in the absence of coercive state power.
Nobel credentials have not translated into control over law enforcement, nor have they deterred radicals from exploiting the vacuum.
The interim government’s weakness has become its defining feature.
Each month that passes without accountability deepens the sense of impunity. Each mob attack further erodes the state’s legitimacy. Each unpunished killing drives home the message that laws no longer govern Bangladesh, but by the whims of whichever faction controls the street.
The unravelling of a state
The consequences of this failure extend beyond the immediate violence. They erode the very architecture of governance. Courts cannot function when witnesses are too afraid to testify.
Schools cannot educate when teachers are forced to resign under threat—at least 49 Hindu teachers have already done so since Hasina’s ouster. Economic activity stalls when businesses are looted or burned.
Social trust collapses when rumours can spark lynchings in minutes.
What remains is not a democracy preparing for elections, but a state sliding toward anarchy.
The interim government was tasked with creating conditions for a peaceful transfer of power. Instead, it has presided over the systematic dismantling of those very conditions.
Elections without order are elections without meaning
Law and order are not luxuries; they are the foundation of political life. In Bangladesh today, that foundation has been shattered.
From lynchings to mob justice, from attacks on minorities to the rise of radicals, the evidence is overwhelming: the Yunus-led interim government has failed in its most basic duty.
As the calendar inches toward the promised election date, one truth stands stark: without law, there can be no democracy. Without order, there can be no elections worth the name. And under Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh has been left with neither.
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