Leaked audio shows Sheikh Hasina ordered lethal force on student-led protests: BBC

An audio recording of a phone call verified by BBC Eye reveals that Sheikh Hasina authorized a deadly crackdown on student-led protests in Bangladesh last year, reports BBC.

In the audio leaked online in March, Hasina is heard authorizing security forces to "use lethal weapons" against protesters, stating that "wherever they find [them], they will shoot," according to the BBC report.

According to UN investigators, up to 1,400 people were killed during the July uprising last year. Sheikh Hasina, who has fled to India, and her party deny all allegations against her.

The BBC reports that a spokesperson for the Awami League stated the recording does not show any "unlawful intention" or "disproportionate response."

The leaked audio of Sheikh Hasina’s conversation with an unidentified senior government official is the strongest evidence so far that she directly authorized security forces to fire on anti-government protesters, according to the BBC report.

The BBC World Service investigation, in collaboration with BBC Bangla, uncovered previously unreported details of a police-led massacre in Dhaka, revealing a much higher death toll.

A source familiar with the leaked recording said Hasina was at her residence, Gono Bhaban, during the phone call, which took place on July 18.

According to the BBC, the recording is one of several involving Sheikh Hasina that were made by the National Telecommunications Monitoring Centre (NTMC).

The source of the leak remains unknown. Since the protests, multiple clips of Hasina's phone calls have surfaced online, many of them unverified.

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Bangladesh Police confirmed that the July 18 recording matched known audio samples of Sheikh Hasina's voice.

The BBC also carried out an independent verification by sharing the recording with audio forensics experts at Earshot, an audio-visual equipment supplier in England. The analysts found no signs of tampering or manipulation and stated that the speech was highly unlikely to be synthetically generated.

Earshot concluded that the recording was likely made in a room with the phone call played aloud on speaker, based on distinctive telephonic frequencies and background noise. They also detected Electric Network Frequency (ENF) throughout the recording—a frequency caused by interference between recording devices and mains-powered equipment—indicating the audio had not been altered.