Dhaka: After the Narayanganj seven-murder verdict, Bangladesh government needs to take immediate steps to disband elite force Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and replace it with a rights-respecting force, said Human Rights Watch (HRW) South Asia Director Meenakshi Ganguly.

“Before taking office in 2009, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said she would reform RAB. This has not happened, so it’s time for the government to take immediate steps to disband RAB and replace it with a rights respecting force,” she said.

In her recent article posted on official website of the HRW titled ‘After Narayanganj verdict, Bangladesh should disband RAB’ Meenakshi mentioned that while in opposition the Awami League called for the disbanding of RAB.

She mentioned that the prosecution of RAB members is a welcome step towards ending violence and impunity. “Yet it shouldn’t only happen when the victim is a ruling party member.”

For years, Meenakshi, claimed Bangladesh’s RAB has been deployed by successive governments not only to fight crime, but often as an in-house death squad, leaving a string of extrajudicial killings – often referred to as “crossfire” deaths, torture, disappearances, and arbitrary arrests in their wake. “And for years, almost no members of RAB were held to account for these crimes.”

She said in a very rare verdict, on January 16 the Narayanganj District and Sessions court sentenced 26 people, including 16 members of RAB, to death for their role in a 2014 murder case.