One hundred dead bodies. In Khulna. In a single year. The people in power have nothing to say about it. Why would they? A government that rose to power on the deaths of thousands has nothing meaningful to say about this procession of corpses in Khulna.
No one even has a clear count of how many people died on the streets between July and August. Government figures are low, private estimates are higher, but the real truth is simple: none of those killings have been investigated. The shooters, the ones giving instructions from helicopters, the ones who planned it all, not a single one has stood before a court. Instead, it’s the victims’ families who are now being harassed. That is the true face of Yunus’s so-called reforms.
Now in Khulna people are being killed every week. Two men are shot point-blank outside the courthouse in broad daylight. In Dumuria a young man’s eyes are gouged out and his body dumped. Inside a home, a grandmother and her two grandchildren are murdered. Unidentified bodies drift in the river. The level of brutality makes it feel like the state structure has collapsed. Law and order barely exists.
Police data says forty-eight murders took place in Khulna city after the fifth of August. That’s twice as many as the year before. District police count forty-seven killings. River police have pulled fifty bodies from the water. These numbers are not just statistics. They are evidence of a failed state. A government that claims to be a reformer has turned the country’s third-largest city into a killing field.
The irony is that Yunus and his circle travel abroad preaching democracy and human rights. Western donors applaud them. Meanwhile the blood on Khulna’s streets doesn’t even have time to dry. How deep does this hypocrisy run when someone can deliver speeches on human rights abroad while remaining unmoved as people are slaughtered at home?
Behind the wave of killings in Khulna is a turf war among drug gangs. Intelligence sources say seventy to one hundred crore taka worth of drugs are traded in Khulna every month. The old drug lords have fled. New groups are fighting to control the market. Police know this, the intelligence agencies know this, yet nothing effective is being done. Because the people in power do not prioritize the lives of ordinary Khulna residents. Their priorities are securing their hold on power, crushing political opponents and keeping their foreign patrons satisfied.
The Yunus government came in promising justice and reform. But there has been no justice for the July-August massacre. The same police that fired on people then are the ones filing cases now in Khulna. The same administrative machinery that took part in the violence is now in charge of maintaining order. This absurd situation exists because justice was never the real goal. The real aim was removing an elected government and seizing power.
How that power grab unfolded is no longer a secret. Foreign funding, support from extremist groups and the direct role of the military all fed into the July riots. School and college students were used as shields on the streets while carefully planned violence was carried out behind them. The same people who orchestrated that are now running the state. How will they deliver justice against themselves?
Khulna’s situation is actually the image of the whole country. In the capital, muggings and killings happen daily. In Chattogram a new reign of extortion and tender manipulation has taken hold. In Sylhet new routes for arms and drug smuggling have opened along the border. No part of the country has a normal law-and-order environment. But for the government these issues are secondary. They are busy drafting constitutional amendments, planning to ban political parties and finding ways to extend their time in power.
The entire Yunus administration is a farce. They claim to want democracy but won’t announce an election date. They talk about rule of law while extrajudicial killings continue unchecked. They talk about human rights while political activists are tortured daily. This double standard exists because they have no accountability to the people. They were not elected. They do not need to face the public.
Most of those dying in Khulna are poor, working-class people. They have no political patronage. No media speaks for them. No international organization cares about their deaths. These quiet, unnoticed deaths reveal the true character of the Yunus government. No matter how loudly they talk about reform, the reality is that under them ordinary lives have no value.
Expecting justice from a government that came to power through bloodshed is foolish. A government with blood on its own hands cannot deliver justice for the murders in Khulna. Until that fundamental question is raised, people will keep dying in more cities. Law and order will keep deteriorating. Criminal groups will keep growing stronger.
The Yunus government is now talking about a national election. But how free or fair can an election be in a place where people are murdered in front of a courthouse at noon? How can voting be imagined in a state where basic security doesn’t exist? These questions are irrelevant to the government. Their goal is staying in power at any cost, not protecting citizens.
Khulna’s hundred bodies are not just a number. Each body raises a question about the moral standing of the Yunus administration. Each death proves that this government has utterly failed to run the state. Each murder case is a reminder that killers cannot deliver justice. The sooner the public understands this truth, the better.