Bangladesh's Universities Have Expelled Dozens of Students Over Homosexuality Allegations This Year

Two first-year students at the University of Dhaka were stripped of their seats in a residential hall this month over allegations that they were involved in “homosexual activity.” Both students denied the accusation. As one of them put it to a local reporter, “How could our seats be cancelled without the allegation even being proven?”

It’s a fair question, and not a new one in Bangladesh this year. The Dhaka University case, reported in the past week, is the latest entry in a pattern that has been building since January: students across the country accused of being gay, then punished by their own universities — often before any investigation, sometimes before any accusation is even substantiated.

A pattern, not an incident

In July, two other students at a separate University of Dhaka residence hall were detained by hall administrators, had their personal phones searched, and were handed over to police over similar allegations. One of them permanently lost his housing.

In May, the pattern escalated sharply at Hajee Mohammad Danesh Science and Technology University, where administrators expelled four students and turned two more directly over to police — again, on suspicion of being gay, with no accusation of harm to anyone. Around the same time, at a Dhaka Unani medical college, a student was reportedly coerced into naming other gay students. That coercion led to five people, including four students, being imprisoned by a mobile court and stripped of their university housing.

Taken individually, each case might look like an isolated overreaction by a housing administrator or a disciplinary committee. Taken together, human rights monitors say, they describe something more systemic: a country where university administrations have become an informal arm of enforcement against a group of students who have committed no offense beyond being suspected of who they are.

The law behind the pattern

Bangladesh still enforces Section 377 of its penal code, a colonial-era law criminalizing “carnal intercourse against the order of nature,” with penalties that can run up to life imprisonment. In practice, prosecutions under Section 377 are rare — but the law’s mere existence appears to be doing quiet, corrosive work well outside the courtroom. It gives universities, hall wardens, and mobile courts a kind of implicit permission to act on suspicion alone, skipping past due process entirely. Students accused of homosexuality are losing their housing, their enrollment, and in some cases their liberty, without anything resembling a fair hearing.

Rights organizations, including the global campaign group All Out, have condemned the expulsions as violations of privacy and due process, calling on Bangladeshi universities to stop treating unverified rumors about students’ private lives as grounds for institutional punishment. So far, there’s little indication any university has changed course. If anything, the frequency of these cases — at least four separate incidents at three different institutions since January — suggests the practice is becoming normalized rather than curbed.

What’s at stake for students

For LGBTQ+ students in Bangladesh, the practical effect is a campus environment defined by surveillance rather than safety: phones searched, roommates and hallmates treated as potential informants, and no clear path to challenge an accusation once it’s made. Advocates say the chilling effect extends well beyond the students directly targeted, discouraging the country’s broader LGBTQ+ youth population from anything that might draw attention — a WhatsApp message, a friendship, a rumor.

There is no indication yet of coordinated pushback from Bangladesh’s Ministry of Education, and no sign the University of Dhaka intends to reverse its latest decision. For now, the pattern continues, one dorm room at a time.