Exonerated Death Row Inmates Detail Years of Psychological Trauma and Financial Ruin at Dhaka Exhibition
Photo Collected
A harrowing exhibition titled “Survival from Death Row,” currently hosted at the Nalini Kanta Bhattasali Gallery in Dhaka’s National Museum, offers a rare, unflinching look into the lives of individuals who spent years on death row before being acquitted of crimes they did not commit. Through the lens of photographer Mushfiqur Rahman, who documented 13 families since 2022, the exhibition captures the devastating intersection of judicial delays, coerced confessions, and the profound psychological scars borne by those who lived under the shadow of the gallows.
For individuals like Sheikh Zahid, who spent 20 years in a condemned cell, the ordeal was a daily cycle of terror. Recounting his experience during a recent discussion at the gallery, Zahid described the persistent fear that every meal might be his last. By the time he was exonerated, his parents had passed away, and he had lost the ability to maintain his former livelihood. Similarly, Majeda Begum from Rangpur described the agonizing experience of entering a condemned cell with her 13-month-old son. Over the next eight years, she struggled with memory loss and severe trauma, forced to raise her child within the confines of a prison cell after a murder conviction based on a confession she claimed was extracted under torture.
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The exhibition, curated by Hadi Uddin with support from BLAST and The Death Penalty Project, highlights how these individuals were systematically pushed into poverty. Many families sold ancestral land, depleted their life savings, and incurred massive debts to pay for legal representation and fight alleged police corruption. Beyond the financial ruin, the victims spoke of “dying a little every day,” trapped in isolation, often in windowless cells, with no contact with the outside world.
Legal experts and human rights activists attending the event emphasized the urgent need for judicial reform. Participants pointed to the inhumane conditions of condemned cells and the protracted nature of the appeals process in Bangladesh. They argued that, unlike in countries such as India where defendants are not placed in death row cells until the final exhaustion of all legal remedies, the current system in Bangladesh effectively punishes individuals before their guilt is definitively proven. Speakers, including retired judges and legal scholars, called for new legislation to provide compensation for those wrongfully convicted and to overhaul how capital cases are managed.
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The personal accounts shared at the exhibition serve as a grim testament to systemic failure. Alamgir Hossain, a mason from Chapainawabganj, spent nine years in prison—six of them on death row—before his acquittal in 2023. Reflecting on his first night of freedom, he remarked that he had forgotten the beauty of the stars, having been denied a view of the sky for nearly a decade.
For the subjects of the exhibition—including Sonaruddi, Anwar Hossain, and others—the “freedom” they have gained remains incomplete. Many continue to suffer from post-traumatic stress, suffering from nightmares where they believe they are still behind bars. The exhibition, which runs through June 15, serves not only as a record of injustice but as an urgent appeal to address the human cost of a judicial system that leaves its survivors broken, destitute, and struggling to reclaim a sense of normalcy in a world that moved on without them.
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