arrests, and other law enforcement operations. Security forces members frequently denied their role in such deaths. They claimed that when they took a suspect in custody to a crime scene to recover weapons or identify coconspirators, accomplices fired on police, police returned fire and, in the ensuing gunfight, the suspect was killed. The government usually described these deaths as “crossfire killings,” “gunfights,” or “encounter killings.” Media also used these terms to describe legitimate uses of police force. Human rights organizations and media claimed many of these crossfire incidents constituted extrajudicial killings. Human rights organizations claimed in some cases law enforcement units detained, interrogated, and tortured suspects, brought them back to the scene of the original arrest, executed them, and ascribed the death to lawful self-defense in response to violent attacks. Extrajudicial killings dramatically decreased from the previous year. Domestic human rights organization Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) reported 19 individuals died in alleged extrajudicial killings or while in custody, including four in so-called crossfires with law enforcement agencies and eight due to physical torture before or while in custody. According to another domestic human rights organization, of 25 incidents of alleged extrajudicial killings between January and September, four deaths resulted from law enforcement crossfire killings, 10 persons were shot to death by law enforcement officers, and 10 others died from alleged torture while in custody. In March domestic think tank Centre for Governance Studies released a report analyzing cases of extrajudicial killing between 2019 and 2021. The report claimed police, particularly the Detective Branch, were involved in more extrajudicial killings (51.2 percent of cases) than the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) (28.8 percent of cases). The report noted the number of extrajudicial killings in Cox’s Bazar was far higher than the rest of the country. In November media reported Shaheen Miah was killed in a “gunfight” with the RAB in Rupganj in Narayanganj district near Dhaka city. In April media reported Mohammad Raju was killed in an alleged crossfire gunfight with the RAB in Comilla. A few days later, a second incident of alleged extrajudicial killing occurred when Kaiser Ahmed was killed in a gunfight with the RAB in Manikganj. Page 3