In its annual report on the global state of human rights, the US Department of State documented in-depth the violations happening in Bangladesh.

The report is an annual documentation of the state of human rights across the world and it acts as resource for its foreign policy.

The extra-judicial killing of Major Sinha Rashed Khan was highlighted as an exemplary case of the state of "unlawful" or "arbitrary" killings in 2020.

"Suspicious deaths occurred during some raids, arrests, and other law enforcement operations. Security forces frequently accounted for such deaths by claiming -- when they took a suspect in custody to a crime scene to recover weapons or identify coconspirators -- accomplices fired on police and killed the suspect," said the report.

The report pointed that custodial torture is still very much a reality in the case of Bangladesh, pointing out the case of Teknaf-based journalist Faridul Mostafa as an example. Mostafa was kept in custody by former officer-in-charge of the police station for 11 months.

"Mostafa was arrested on September 2019 and according to his wife, tortured in custody. When Mostafa appeared in court three days after his arrest, his wife said his hands and legs were broken, and the nails of his fingers and toes were pulled out. His eyesight had been badly affected by red chili powder rubbed in his eyes and he was forced to drink sewage water, causing severe diarrhea," said the report.

Hand-in-hand with extrajudicial killings and torture, a culture of arbitrary arrests further muddy the rights situation, implied the report.

The report mentioned the arrest of the Middle-east migrant worker returnees as an example of how arbitrary arrests can be used to disenfranchise people.

"Government authorities arrested at least 251 returning migrant workers from Southeast Asia and the Middle East with allegations of "tarnishing the image of [Bangladesh]," said the report.

It said that in response to media queries, the police said the migrant workers' destination countries had requested authorities to detain the workers once they returned to the country.

"However, human rights groups characterised these requests as specious and said while some of the returning workers were jailed abroad, they had all either completed their sentences or had their sentences commuted due to Covid-19," said the report.

The report also paints a bleak picture of the situation of worker rights. "The law continued to ban trade unions and severely restricted the right to organise and bargain collectively for the nearly 500,000 workers in export processing zones (EPZs)."

"The government reported nine complaints were filed for unfair labour practices; three were resolved according to the law and standard operating procedures, six remained open, and no employers were penalised," said the report. It documented meticulously how labour unions fail to adequately represent the rights of workers.

Pertaining to migrant workers, the report said, "The government does not provide sufficient victim protective services, nor does it consistently follow victim identification procedures. There are no government-owned shelters for adult male victims."

In addition, the report clamped on the state of indigenous rights by stating, "No land disputes were resolved during the year." It mentioned the state's pledge to solve land disputes and demilitarise the Chattogram Hill Tracts, and how that commitment is yet to be kept.

The report also documented the state of women's rights, LGBTI rights and disabled rights.