Weaponising the Law: The Human Cost of Bangladesh’s Growing False-Case Culture
Salma Aktar Priyo : In Bangladesh, a stamped First Information Report (FIR) will cost around the price of a cheap meal, but this relatively simple document can wreck a life well before a judge hears a scrap of evidence. Immigration authorities on May 18, 2025, arrested the renowned actress Nusraat Faria during a trip to Bangkok and indicted her for trying to kill a student protester in Vatara.
Even though there was no proof that she ever met the victim, images of handcuffed Faria quickly went viral in national and international media. In the court of public opinion, she was already convicted, even as the formal process of law had barely begun.
This is not an isolated incident. New research reveals an alarming pattern of abusive false accusations taking advantage of the legal system. A 684 Dhaka Metropolitan Police review of child sexual abuse cases reported between 2021 and 2023 found that 17 percent were factually groundless.
Peer-reviewed studies published in 2024 tracked 312 cases of rape in five districts and discovered that 14 percent of the charges were determined by trial courts themselves to be false. And a 2023 study published in the South Asian Law Review based on 450 dowry-cruelty and violence-against-women cases found that nearly 20 percent were filed tactically to gain an advantage in personal disputes.
Bangladesh’s lower courts are already handling around 3.9 million pending criminal cases. Applying even the lowest of these percentages places it at around 600,000 to 800,000 people defending themselves against meritless charges that will never be heard by a court.
Bangladesh laws provide for punishing false charges. Penal Code section 182 prescribes six months imprisonment for providing false information to public servants. Section 193 punishes seven years for the crime of forging evidence.
Section 211 offers a maximum of seven years, or even as much as the maximum sentence of the forged offense, to those who preferred “charges with intent to injure.” The Code of Criminal Procedure section 250 also empowers magistrates to jail or impose fines on a person who makes “false or vexatious” complaints.
But in 2024, only 43 individuals were prosecuted under section 211, although over two million new criminal cases were filed that year. Prosecutors cite dire resource constraints, but judges quietly admit bringing bogus case charges adds paperwork and time to an already oppressive backlog, with over 57 percent of the cases remaining beyond their planned hearing dates.
The human toll of this problem unfolds quietly out of the spotlight. In Kishoreganj, Rubel, a small businessperson, sold his lone strip of land in order to post bail after another businessperson accused him of theft in a false report; CCTV cameras later proved he was miles away.
Fatema, a primary school teacher in Rangpur, was suspended without pay for 14 months following a police investigation into a dowry cruelty charge, which resulted in a “no offence” report; she now suffers crippling debt and clinical depression.
Following the July 2023 protests, 712 students and activists were taken to court, but investigations have now declared more than 40 percent of them as cases of mistaken identity. Disregarding this, the suspects keep coming to court every week, disrupting their studies and jobs.
In a study by BRAC University in 2024, they found the average cost of defending a criminal case to be around 115,000 taka the equivalent of 18 months’ worth of pay for the average garment worker and this does not include lost pay and the social stigma of criminal charges.
Why is it so common to file a false FIR when this is the price paid? The answer is in the simplicity and low initial risk. There is no initial proof to be required before filing an FIR, and most times, it does not amount to punishment when it fails. Sensational media reports have a tendency to preemptively assume guilt, so police have to prove their mettle even with weak evidence.
Politically powerful complainants exploit this asymmetry, knowing that long judicial delay by itself can ruin the reputations and livelihood of their targets. Judges, overwhelmed by caseloads that can dispose of up to seventy cases a day, are reluctant to prefer prosecutions under section 211, for fear of generating further backlog.
A policy brief issued in March 2025 by four retired Supreme Court justices offers practicable solutions. It recommends that an acquittal should automatically trigger inquiry into whether the original complaint was false and shift the burden onto the complainant to account for the charge.
Judges should order defendants to pay full restitution, including costs and lost wages. A public register of section 211 convictions would serve as a deterrent to vexatious allegations and provide the public and media with a fact-checking resource before harm-causing headlines become permanent.
Having legal aid counters at district courts would speed up petitions to dismiss frivolous cases and speed up High Court motions for quashing frivolous charges under section 561A of the Criminal Procedure Code, significantly lowering innocent defendants’ ordeal.
These changes do not require new laws but political will to enforce existing ones. Until sections 182, 193, 211, and 250 are utilized by the police, prosecutors, and judges to their full potential and with determination, false allegations will remain to fill the dignity, savings, and mental well-being of so many Bangladeshis. Nusraat Faria’s fame arrest has merely highlighted an existing, systemic problem.
If even a renowned actress can’t easily recover from a derogatory FIR before it reduces her reputation and career to ashes, what chance do small traders, garment workers, and rickshaw pullers have? The response will tell us whether Bangladesh’s courts are still bastions of justice or become war zones where the truth must wait in line.
Author is a Student, Department of law, World University of Bangladesh.
