Four Murders, Two Narratives, and the Evidence in Between

Four people have been brutally murdered. Yet in Bangladesh, the most urgent competition now seems to be over who can write the story of the murders first: The police or Facebook?

The killing of retired teacher Ganapati Chakraborty, his wife Pritilata Chakraborty, their daughter Agami Chakraborty and their son Ayush Chakraborty in Rangpur has already produced two remarkably confident narratives.

On one side, the police moved very quickly to present an almost complete account. According to that version, two young men were discovered consuming yaba, killed four members of the family one after another, remained inside the house, bathed, ate food, disconnected the electricity and staged the scene to resemble a robbery.

On the other side, a section of social media has already reached the opposite verdict: This was a planned communal killing, and two Hindu young men are being turned into another “Joj Mia” in order to shield the real perpetrators.

Both positions trouble me. A police press conference is not judicial truth. But public suspicion is not evidence either.

Several important facts have so far emerged. Post-mortem findings indicate that all four victims died from strangulation. Two suspects have been arrested, and police say both gave confessional statements before a magistrate under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. That is highly significant evidence.

A confession does not mean the investigation is over. The task of a competent criminal investigation is to corroborate a confession with physical, forensic, and digital evidence.

If the two accused really remained inside that house for many hours, the scene should contain a substantial evidentiary footprint. Whose DNA is on the date seeds reportedly recovered from the house?

Whose DNA is on the towel or rope allegedly used in the killings? Whose epithelial material is beneath the victims’ fingernails? Do the scratches reportedly found on Siddhartha’s body contain DNA from any of the victims?

Do the suspects’ clothes contain the victims’ blood, cells or other biological material? Can the recovered gold be independently linked to the household? Was it recovered from a location that police could not reasonably have known without information supplied by an accused?

What do mobile location records, call detail records and cell tower data show? Is there a digital trail connecting the suspects with the alleged yaba seller? Were fingerprints, footprints or other trace evidence recovered from the alleged routes of entry and exit through neighbouring properties?

These are investigative questions. In fact, their answers matter infinitely more than a press conference.

“They do not look like drug users” is not an investigative argument. “Their families say they never used yaba” may be relevant testimony, but it is not conclusive evidence. Families do not always know about a relative’s drug use.

Equally, a police claim that drugs were involved does not make that claim true. It must be tested through toxicology, drug residue, witness testimony, communications data and physical evidence.

The same applies to the claim that “two people could not have killed four people.” They could. Multiple homicides have been committed by two offenders and, in some cases, by one.

That does not mean these two men committed these murders. In multiple homicide analysis, surprise, the sequence of attacks, the victims’ ages and physical condition, their positions, possible restraint and intoxication can all matter. Criminology cannot be conducted through Facebook intuition.

Questions such as “they had never taken drugs before,” “they had no criminal record” or “how could they sleep after killing four people?” are legitimate questions, but none is exculpatory proof.

There is no single psychological template for how a first time killer must behave. Post offence behaviour varies enormously. Some offenders flee.

Some attempt to resume ordinary life. Some return to the crime scene. Some remain among neighbours, crowds or even investigators. Behaviour that appears strange to the public is not, by itself, evidence of innocence or guilt.

The same evidentiary standard, however, must apply to the police. One of the most serious problems in this case has been the speed with which certainty was publicly manufactured.

At a very early stage of the investigation, a detailed account extending from motive to murder sequence was presented almost like a completed screenplay.

Some initial police claims have subsequently appeared to conflict with medical accounts. Early speculation about acid or chemical damage to the victims’ faces was rejected by the postmortem doctor, who attributed the appearance to decomposition. Different descriptions have also emerged concerning some of the daughter’s injuries.

None of these discrepancies automatically proves that the police hypothesis is false. But they raise an obvious question: why was such a definitive story presented before the forensic process had been completed?

One of the most important principles of criminal investigation is hypothesis testing. Investigators construct a possible explanation and then actively test whether the evidence can disprove it.

If the police hypothesis is that the killings began after the suspects were discovered consuming yaba, investigators must seek evidence supporting that account while simultaneously testing alternatives. Was there another motive? Was anyone else present at the scene?

Could another person have participated, facilitated or directed any part of the crime? A credible investigation does not become weaker by testing competing explanations. It becomes stronger.

There is also a serious media ethics problem. The way Ekattor TV reportedly recorded and broadcast an interview with a morgue assistant using a hidden camera and without his consent deserves scrutiny.

The widely circulated claim that the assistant said semen had been found also conflicts directly with the subsequent account given by the forensic doctor.

In forensic medicine, collecting a sample is not the same as establishing sexual assault. Where there is suspicion, samples are collected precisely so that laboratory analysis can determine whether relevant forensic material is present.

When the doctor says laboratory examination of the collected samples found no evidence supporting rape, dismissing that finding simply because “a morgue assistant said otherwise” replaces forensic reasoning with rumour.

The widespread social media claim that the mother and daughter were raped therefore requires particular caution. Circulating allegation as fact without verified evidence is irresponsible and deeply disrespectful to the dignity of the dead women.

My objection goes further. Partially clothed or naked images of the murdered mother and daughter have been circulated on social media in the name of demanding justice. But bodily privacy does not end when a woman dies. Death does not create consent.

If a living survivor of sexual violence were photographed in this condition, publishing those images without consent would rightly be recognised as a grave ethical violation.

Why should the ethical threshold become lower because the woman is dead? If anything, the obligation to protect her dignity becomes greater because she can no longer withdraw consent, object or defend herself.

When social media begins speculating about how far a dead woman’s clothing had moved, which parts of her body were visible, or what may have been found on her body, she is gradually transformed from victim into spectacle.

After the possible violence of the perpetrator, society asserts a second form of control over her body, this time through the mobile screen, the share button and competing political narratives.

I would describe this as a form of secondary victimization. The first violence occurs during the crime. The second occurs when the victim’s body, sexuality and possible abuse are turned into objects of public consumption without consent. Justice for victims cannot be built by violating the dignity of the victims.

The minority dimension is equally impossible to dismiss. The murdered family was Hindu, and in the present Bangladeshi context that identity cannot simply be bracketed out of the investigation.

There is a documented pattern behind minority insecurity. According to the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, 258 incidents of violence against religious and ethnic minorities were recorded during the first six months of 2025, including 27 murders.

The Council later reported 522 incidents of communal violence across 2025, including 61 murder incidents in which 66 people were killed. 

For the first six months of 2026, it reported 257 incidents of communal violence, with 44 people killed in 40 incidents. These are figures reported by a minority rights organization and should be understood as such.

Disputes over classification also matter: incidents described by minority organizations as communal may sometimes be classified by state bodies or other monitors as political, economic or personal violence. That disagreement itself is one reason transparent investigation matters.

For criminal investigation, the analytical point is straightforward. Minority status is not proof of motive, but it is a relevant line of inquiry.

To conclude that the murders must have been communal simply because the Chakraborty family was Hindu would be irrational. But to declare their religious identity irrelevant at the beginning of the investigation would be equally intellectually dishonest.

A genuinely impartial investigation should ask whether the family had previously received communal threats; whether there were family, financial, land or property disputes; whether there had been extortion; whether there was any documented history of intimidation linked to religious identity; whether anything about the method or scene of the killings communicated a message; and whether digital or physical evidence connects any other individual or group to the crime.

Conversely, the fact that the two accused are themselves Hindu does not automatically make a communal dimension impossible.

Motive is not a demographic equation. We cannot determine motive simply by placing the religion of the accused in one column and the religion of the victims in another. 

The questions are who did what, why they did it, who else may have been involved, and what the evidence actually establishes.

This is precisely where intellectual discipline matters. The documented history of violence against minorities in Bangladesh gives us legitimate reasons to ask difficult questions. But that history does not prove the motive of any particular murder in advance.

Context tells us which questions must be asked. Evidence tells us which answer is true.

If we lose that distinction, the state can too easily suppress a possible communal motive, while social media can too easily convert a horrific murder into a communal conspiracy before the evidence establishes one. Both are dangerous to the search for truth.

The truth may ultimately resemble the police account. It may be considerably more complicated. We do not yet know. Why are we so afraid to say those four words: we do not yet know?

Social media has already circulated claims involving rape, genital mutilation, jizya, state conspiracy and militant involvement. Seeking justice for the dead while turning their bodies into a social media spectacle is not justice.

The central question in this case is how the state will establish the truth. After four members of a minority family have been murdered, the investigation must not merely be correct. It must also be demonstrably credible.

The police therefore need to establish an evidentiary chain beyond the confessions. DNA, fingerprints, toxicology, digital evidence, injuries, recovered property and timeline must converge. At the same time, alternative motives must be investigated genuinely rather than ceremonially.

Civil society also has responsibilities. Question the police. Ask difficult questions. Demand an independent or judicial inquiry if necessary. But do not declare a preferred political narrative to be fact before the evidence arrives.

At present, both sides risk making the same mistake. One side is rushing to say: “Look, this was simply the crime of two drug intoxicated young men.”

The other is rushing to say: “Look, this is part of a state sponsored campaign against Hindus.”

And somewhere between those two narratives, Ganapati, Pritilata, Agami and Ayush risk ceasing to be four human beings and becoming evidence for somebody else’s political story.

Dr. Lubna Ferdowsi is an academic and researcher based in England.