The daylight killing of Sharif Osman Hadi, a 32-year-old student leader and spokesperson for Inquilab Mancha who was contesting the forthcoming elections as an independent candidate, belongs to a long story of political fratricide. On December 12, 2025, masked assailants on a motorcycle shot Hadi in the head while he travelled in an auto-rickshaw in Dhaka. He died six days later in a Singapore hospital. The shadows of such violence over Bangladesh’s political culture have only lengthened over time.
The presence of murder in everyday political conversation traces back to the Liberation War of 1971, when the Pakistan army and the Razakars committed genocide in what was then East Pakistan. The Razakars were a militia group that included Urdu-speaking Bihari migrants and pro-Pakistan Bengalis who collaborated with the Pakistani military against the Bengali nationalist movement. The student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami was affiliated with the Razakars and provided foot soldiers for the counter-liberation force that committed mass killings and rapes. Numerous massacres occurred during 1971, many targeting Bengali Hindus.
