Can digitising justice break the cycle of impunity?

While the seats of power have shifted since the election in February, a much older, darker reality persists for the women and children of Bangladesh. A systemic epidemic of gender-based violence persists in the country, where the very institutions meant to provide justice often act as the primary barrier to it. This isn’t just about a few corrupt officers; it is about an entire structure that protects anyone with enough money or political muscle.

To understand the depth of this rot, we need only look back on the visceral horrors that have transpired in recent weeks. On February 24, a six-year-old girl was taken to an under-construction building in Dhaka’s Hatirjheel area and was reportedly raped before being murdered. While her family and neighbours protested outside the police station, a familiar fear began to spread: the rumour that influential local figures were already pulling strings to bury the investigation.

On March 1, an eight-year-old girl was found by road workers inside Sitakunda Eco Park in Chattogram. The perpetrator had slit her throat, severing her windpipe in a literal attempt to silence her. Despite receiving treatment, the child eventually succumbed to her injuries. The perpetrator (a neighbour of the girl’s family) was identified, arrested, and jailed, with police confirming the victim has been subjected to attempted rape. Meanwhile, in Narsingdi, a 15-year-old was abducted and murdered in retaliation of her family demanding justice for a previous assault by the same perpetrators. The fact that a former Union Parishad member was among those arrested in connection with the crime shows how political power is often a tool for violence.

In these cases, even when the courts eventually move, they move too slowly. In March 2025, an eight-year-old in Magura died after being raped by her sister’s in-laws. The attention this case received in public discourse can be credited for the relatively speedy trial that followed. Unfortunately, for every case that receives justice quickly, hundreds of cases are quietly discarded because the families were too scared or too poor to fight the system.

The core of the problem is a massive vacuum in our laws. Without a dedicated witness protection law, victims and witnesses are left completely exposed. In rural areas, this allows the shalish (village councils) to take over. These councils often resort to “settling” rape cases by forcing the survivor to marry her rapist. This is essentially the state allowing for lifelong domestic torture to take place. This cycle is reinforced by the fact that marital rape is still not a crime in Bangladesh. When the Women’s Affairs Reform Commission made recommendations to change this in 2025, rallies were held against the proposed changes, led by right-wing groups, who called the reforms “anti-Islamic.” Ultimately, these vital protections were left to languish in legislative limbo.

To break this cycle, we must fix our broken bureaucracy. A key part of the solution can be a publicly accessible justice dashboard—a digital registry allowing any victim or witness to securely log incidents. The first step is anonymous geographic mapping. If a map shows a sudden cluster of child abductions in a specific union, for example, it would become impossible to claim an incident as being isolated. To make sure no one can delete a file or change a statement, the system should use immutable, blockchain-style digital logging. Every medical report and police action would be timestamped and visible to everyone. If a local officer “loses” a forensics report, the whole country would be able to see who was responsible for the delay.

Finally, we need a fundamental change in how we prosecute these crimes through an evidence-based, irrevocable prosecution process. Perpetrators often intimidate a victim’s family into withdrawing their case. They may kidnap relatives or burn down crops until the victim says, “I don’t want to testify.” In a digitised system, once a case is validated, the state must assume the full burden of prosecution. If a rapist knows that killing or bribing the victim won’t stop the trial, because the state is moving forward regardless, the incentive to intimidate largely disappears. The target is moved from the back of a traumatised child and onto the shoulders of the state.

What is the true measure of a nation’s progress? It is the safety of its women and children as well as other vulnerable communities. To ensure this, we cannot keep asking survivors to be heroes and fight the system alone. Given the present state of things, digitising all relevant aspects of the justice system can be a powerful tool in ensuring that violence against the powerless leads to real, unavoidable accountability.

Benzir Ahammed Shawon is a graduate student of applied mathematics and computational science at North South University. He can be reached at write.benzir@gmail.com.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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