Health Adviser Nurjahan Begum said the government has verified information on 737 deceased individuals on the preliminary list of people who died during the student-led mass upsurge in July and August.
She added that the list of deceased so far is not final, as reports of injured individuals succumbing to their injuries were still being received.
Nurjahan Begum made the statements during a briefing at the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Monday.
She explained that the Directorate General of Health Services’ MIS system is continuously being updated, and as of Monday, this data has been cross-checked.
She highlighted that several challenges were faced while compiling the list of the deceased. Some victims were brought to hospitals already deceased. In some cases, families took the bodies without completing necessary formalities, such as obtaining death certificates or conducting postmortems, to avoid police cases.
Regarding the injured, she said that around 400 individuals had sustained eye injuries, with many hospitalized. Among them, 35 people lost both eyes, and 22 are on the list for prosthetic limb replacement. The number could increase as further data is confirmed.
On Sunday, the interim government published a preliminary list of people who died during the student-led mass upsurge.
On September 24, the government published a draft list of 708 names on the website of the Health Services Division under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
That draft list underwent further scrutiny, leading to the preliminary list.
The names and identities of the deceased were collected from various public and private hospitals.
The list can be accessed at https://medical-info.dghs.gov.bd/.
Quoting available public reports from the media and the protest movement itself, the UN rights body stated that between July 16 and August 11, more than 600 people were killed, according to the report titled “Preliminary Analysis of Recent Protests and Unrest in Bangladesh.”
Of these, nearly 400 deaths were reported from July 16 to August 4, while around 250 people were reportedly killed following the new wave of protests between August 5 and 6.