Netra News

Netra News (Bengali: নেত্র নিউজ) is a Sweden-based investigative and public interest journalism platform focusing on Bangladesh. The platform was launched on December 26, 2019, by Tasneem Khalil, an exiled Bangladeshi journalist currently living in Sweden, who serves as its editor-in chief.

Within 72 hours of its inception, the Netra News website was blocked by authorities in Bangladesh, with Khalil himself alleging and media reports suggesting that Bangladesh’s military intelligence agency, Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), orchestrated the ban.

On 14 August 2022, Netra News gained international attention with a whistleblower report alleging that Bangladeshi officials were detaining and torturing victims of enforced disappearances at Aynaghar (House of Mirrors), a secret detention facility in Bangladesh. Following the collapse of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government amid a popular uprising in August 2024, inmates held at the facility were released, and media were also given access to the site.

In May 2025, the news organization received the 2025 Shorenstein Journalism Award from Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. The award, according to a statement, recognized Netra News for “its courageous investigations into high-level corruption and human rights abuses in Bangladesh.”