The Vested Property Act first appeared in 1965, when Bangladesh was part of Pakistan. It was at that time called the "Enemy Property Act." In that year, war broke out between India and Pakistan. The law was directed primarily against the property of the numerous Hindus who had temporarily fled to India in fear. The state was enabled to take their property into custody, with the rationale that a Hindu who went to India was an 'enemy of the state'.

After the Bangladeshi War of Independence (1971), culminating in the birth of Bangladesh, it was expected that the law would be repealed. Far from hostilities, newly born Bangladesh, enjoyed excellent relations with India. However, all that happened was that 'Enemy Property Act' was renamed the 'Vested Property Act'.

This was a conniving move by the government of Bangladesh. As a result, millions of people who had fled temporarily to West Bengal in order to escape the mass killings that occurred in the prelude to the 1971 War could no longer return to claim their ancestral homes in the newly found state of Bangladesh. It was a political move, which forced the refugees to stay in India, thus conveniently offloading millions of people (of whom 80% were Hindu), and acquire huge amounts of property.

An amendment passed in 1976 made the Vested Property Act even more draconian. Whereas previously the state was only the custodian, it now became the outright owner of any confiscated property, which it could then redistribute.

The amendment encouraged a long and slow repression of Hindus, which has scarcely been documented. All that needed to be done to acquire Hindu owned property was to forcibly evict the Hindus, through violence, and make them flee. As per the Vested Property Act it was easy for the local government to gain ownership and redistribute the property at will, including to their own friends and relatives. The violence would be orchestrated either by greedy politicians or hardline Islamic clerics who wanted an 'infidel free' Bangladesh. The biggest winners were local politicians who found it particularly easy to gain property via the Vested Property Act.

The law has been put to particular devastating effect against homes owned by women, as these were easier targets. It was estimated in the year 2000, that the land taken from Hindus in this manner totalled to 2.1 million acres, which would at current prices be worth $22,873 million (USA), accounting for some 40% of Hindu households of the country. This is all terrible news for the Hindus of Bangladesh whose population has already dwindled from over 25% to less than 9% today.

The details of the long and painful story of how the Vested Property Act has been used against religious minorities in Bangladesh would not have been chronicled had it not been for a team of scholars led by a Professor of Economics at Dhaka University, Dr Abdul Barkat. The work began first in 1995, and a preliminary study was published in 1997. A more detailed account was published recently. Dr Barkat informed an interviewer that he had recently received threats on his life for conducting this study. We thank Dr Barkat for his watershed study, highlighting one of the most systematic constitutional oppressions in modern history.