Online GD to link unclaimed bodies with missing-person reports

Bangladesh Police has added a module to its online General Diary (GD) software that automatically matches the descriptions and clothing of unidentified bodies against missing-person GDs. 

The move comes as fingerprint checks against National ID (NID) servers often fail, and police units have been told to enter their data by 12 November.

Bodies are regularly recovered across the country. Matching fingerprints against NID servers is the most reliable way to identify them, but many bodies are badly decomposed and many of the dead held no NID. Their identities then remain unknown and they are buried as unclaimed, police said.

Under the new module, details of each unidentified body will be uploaded and compared automatically with missing-person GDs, where one has been filed, sources at Police Headquarters (PHQ) said.

PHQ wrote to the units concerned on 26 October asking them to enter the information into the module. It sent a second letter on 4 November setting a deadline of 12 November for entering data on unclaimed bodies.

The 26 October letter says detailed information on unidentified bodies is held at the recovering police station and is not automatically passed to others. 

"As there is no integrated database at the central level, difficulties arise in verifying and matching" this information against missing-person records in the online GD, it says.

It adds that the results of matches between missing persons and unidentified bodies will be displayed automatically, helping investigating officers establish identities. 

PHQ directed units to ensure that detailed information on every such body recovered anywhere in the country is entered into the module and kept updated.

On 25 September, the body of a 35-year-old man was found in the Shrimoti canal in North Chhanhara under Patiya police station in Chattogram. Police prepared the inquest report, collected photographs and completed legal procedures before sending the body to the morgue of Chattogram Medical College Hospital. After the post-mortem on 26 September, it was handed to the Chattogram branch of Anjuman Mufidul Islam and buried according to religious rites. Police recorded an unnatural death and published a photograph of the decomposed body on police-run news portals, seeking help to identify him.

In the capital, Darus Salam police station recovered the half-decomposed body of a man aged about 38 from Bagbari on 12 August. It was found half-submerged in drain water on the southern side of a building under construction at SA Khalek City. His identity has not been established, and a murder case has been filed. The officer-in-charge has uploaded a photograph on DMP News, seeking public assistance.

A police officer of superintendent rank, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the daily Sun that the new method would help address the existing problems with unidentified bodies.

Anjuman Mufidul Islam data show that it buried 2,104 unclaimed bodies from 2023 to August 2026. 

The annual figures were 490 in 2023, 570 in 2024, 644 in 2025 and 400 in the first eight months of this year.

In a statement on 3 September, PHQ said 15,717 GDs had been filed at police stations nationwide from January to July this year over the same number of missing children. 

Of these, 13,273 had been found, while the rest remained missing at that time, according to police data. 

Detailed data on missing people of all ages could not be obtained.