Netra News

06/06/2026

Opinion by Noyonika Das— A voter purge built on the language of “illegal Bangladeshis” was meant to hand the BJP the state. The results tell a stranger story.

04/06/2026

প্রায় নির্মূল হয়ে যাওয়া রোগ হাম হঠাৎ করেই ফিরে এসেছে বাংলাদেশে। সংক্রমণে মারা যাচ্ছে শিশুরা। বিশেষজ্ঞরা টিকা সরবরাহের সংকটকে প্রধানত দায়ী করছেন। কিন্তু কীভাবে সৃষ্টি হলো এই সংকট? অন্তত শতাধিক পাতার সরকারি নথিপত্র, দাতাসংস্থা সমূহের চিঠি চালাচালি, সরকারি উচ্চ পর্যায়ের একাধিক বৈঠকের বিবরণী ও সংশ্লিষ্ট কর্মকর্তাদের সাক্ষাৎকার থেকে এই সংকটের একটি স্পষ্ট চিত্র তুলে এনেছে নেত্র নিউজ।

02/06/2026

The children the state doesn't see

02/06/2026

Netra Report by Mizanur Rahman — Netra News obtained and analysed administrative data from the Supreme Court that lays bare a system buckling under its own weight. As of December 2025, just 102 justices sat on the High Court, facing 659,256 cases — an average of 6,463 each. Across 18 years of disposal records, a justice clears about 435 cases a year. Even if the court accepted no case tomorrow, working through the existing pile at that rate would take more than 15 years.

The lower courts are worse. Across the subordinate judiciary, 2,301 judges carry 4,041,362 pending cases, roughly 1,756 apiece. To clear that backlog in a single year, with no new filings, Bangladesh would need about 6,300 judges — nearly three times its current bench. Almost 700,000 disputes have sat in district courts for more than five years without a verdict.

02/06/2026

Netra News has been shortlisted for this year’s Free Media Pioneer Award by International Press Institute and IMS (International Media Support).

Thank you for your continued support!

See the full list: https://ipi.media/11-trailblazing-organisations-shortlisted-for-2026-ipi-ims-free-media-pioneer-award/

01/06/2026

Inside the rise of mobi̶l̶e̶ journalism

31/05/2026

১৯৯৮ সালে যমুনা সেতু চালু হওয়া ছিল বাংলাদেশের অভ্যন্তরীণ সড়ক-যোগাযোগের ইতিহাসে যুগান্তকারী ঘটনা। তবে সেতু রক্ষায় গাইড বাঁধ নির্মাণ ও নদী-নিয়ন্ত্রণ প্রকল্প নদীর স্বাভাবিক প্রবাহে এনেছে পরিবর্তন। ফলে নদী সংকোচন, নতুন চরের উৎপত্তি, ভাঙন, নদীবর্তী মানুষের জীবিকা হ্রাস এবং স্থানীয় কৃষি ও মৎস্য খাতে তৈরি হচ্ছে বিপর্যয়।

30/05/2026

NEW: In a strongly worded letter on February 10th, declaring that vaccines had run out five days earlier, Unicef’s Rana Flowers also objected to a government proposal to procure vaccines through an open tender.

When the letter was leaked in late April, it set off a public outcry, with debate increasingly casting the open-tender plan as the principal cause of the shortage. But the official record reviewed by Netra News tells a more complicated story.

30/05/2026

Netra Report by Iffat Ara Munia — Netra News reviewed more than a decade of Marine Fisheries Department records, from 2015 to 2025, along with internal departmental data, and interviewed nearly 100 fishermen at landing stations in Bhola and Chittagong. The findings describe a widening conflict in the Bay of Bengal between industrial fleets and the coastal communities that depend on the same waters — and a marine governance system in which violations by trawlers are documented and fines are collected, but punishment rarely follows.

27/05/2026

At almost every decision point, the investigation found, the country’s public health bureaucracy was paralysed by accumulating delay. A central miscalculation: a dependence on loans that were assumed to be within reach, and were not.

It was not the product of a single disastrous decision, nor — as is popularly believed — of one controversial procurement plan. It built up, over months, through warnings that were ignored or lost inside overlapping layers of administration. By the time the public fully grasped the scale of the emergency, in early 2026, the damage had already been done.

A financing overhaul, a budget set too late, a misplaced faith in foreign loans, warnings left unheeded — how it all converged into a measles outbreak that has killed at least 88 children, and likely hundreds more.