Mashfiq Mizan

Last year, 17-year-old Nur Mostofa, like many of his peers, took to the streets, standing shoulder to shoulder with the masses to protest the killings of hundreds at the hands of law enforcers during the July uprising and to demand the resignation of then-prime minister Sheikh Hasina.

Ashiqur Rahman Hridoy, 16, was hit with 35 shotgun pellets -- three of them lodged in his head -- during a protest against the state crackdown on quota reform demonstrators in Dhaka’s Jatrabari on July 18.

Emotions ran high. Exhaustion was evident on their faces.

The Daily Star found evidence of systematic government efforts to cover up medical records and bodies of the July uprising victims so they can never be found again.

When we first started visiting Dhaka Medical College Hospital in January for this story, there were seven protest-related unclaimed bodies freezing in its mortuaries.

On the afternoon of August 5, 2024, word spread across the country that Sheikh Hasina fled to India. In Gazipur, like elsewhere in the country, thousands poured into the streets in celebration. But there was also anger.

They all had families, desperately searching for them amid a nationwide curfew and internet shutdown at the height of the July uprising. Yet, they were buried as "unclaimed" bodies within one to six days after being shot dead, before their loved ones could find them. Seven months after the July

The Daily Star investigates how July uprising protesters were disappeared in unmarked graves