The legal counsel of former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has written formally to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, demanding a public retraction of a key finding in a UN fact-finding report on the 2024 Bangladesh protests - specifically its estimate that up to 1,400 people were killed during the unrest.
The letter, dated May 28, 2026, and written by Steven Powles KC of London's Doughty Street Chambers, challenges the central casualty figure published by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in its February 2025 report, "Human Rights Violations and Abuses related to the Protests of July and August 2024 in Bangladesh."
"It has come to light - even based on the official records of the Interim Government that spread false and inflammatory information to justify the violent overthrow of Prime Minister Hasina's Government - that the Fact-Finding Report's conclusion that 1,400 protestors were killed during this period was highly inaccurate," Powles wrote in the letter, accessed by NDTV.
The OHCHR report concluded that as many as 1,400 people were killed in just 46 days, the vast majority shot by security forces, and found reasonable grounds to believe that officials of the former government, its security and intelligence apparatus, together with violent elements associated with the former ruling party, committed serious and systematic human rights violations.
The report was widely cited internationally and contributed to sustained international pressure on Hasina, who fled Bangladesh in August 2024 and has remained in exile in India.
Powles' letter points to Bangladesh's own Official Gazette - published by the Interim Government on January 15, 2025 - which lists the number of casualties closer to 834, roughly half the UN figure.
The letter further noted that even this figure may be inflated, citing the student-led Anti-Discrimination Movement's own tally of 650 deaths.
"The actual number is likely to be even lower, if there was an investigation based on independent and impartial sources," the letter stated.
The counsel argued that the inflated figure was weaponised politically.
"The much higher figure was used to exaggerate the nature and extent of the violence, and to portray Prime Minister Hasina as having ordered the mass-murder of peaceful protestors; an accusation that was central to the campaign to overthrow her Government," Powles wrote.
The letter raised broader concerns about the independence of the OHCHR inquiry, noting it was conducted "at the invitation of the Interim Government" led by Dr Muhammad Yunus - a government that Powles describes as having been "implicated in committing widespread human rights abuses" documented by multiple NGOs, and which is the subject of an Article 15 Communication to the International Criminal Court alleging crimes against humanity.
The counsel also highlighted that Yunus himself had acknowledged the movement that ousted Hasina was a "carefully planned, disciplined operation."
The OHCHR fact-finding mission covered the period July 15 to August 5, 2024, and the Bangladeshi government's Official Gazette, published in January 2025, listed 834 "martyrs" of the uprising - a figure that itself emerged from a government whose impartiality the letter disputes.
The timing of the letter is significant. In November 2025, a domestic war crimes court in Bangladesh sentenced Sheikh Hasina and former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan to death on charges of crimes against humanity linked to the protest crackdown. Hasina's legal team has consistently contested those proceedings as politically motivated.
Powles concluded by calling on the OHCHR to act swiftly. "The OHCHR is respectfully requested to issue a public retraction and correction of this aspect of the report regarding the figure of 1,400 protestors killed. This is necessary to ensure that the UN does not become an instrument for perpetuating a false narrative."
The OHCHR has not yet responded.
