The Bangladesh Police are tasked with protecting citizens’ safety and rights, and maintaining law and order. Yet much of the legal and administrative structure underpinning the force still has its roots in British colonial rule. The more than a century-and-a-half-old police laws and the administrative system built on them rest on executive authority; both have been questioned for years.

Political influence over recruitment, transfer and promotion has compounded the problem, as has the deployment of the force to serve political interests along with persistent allegations of abuse.

Successive reform efforts since independence have left the inherited colonial foundations largely intact. Attempts to create a force that is responsive to the public, professional and free from political interference have repeatedly stalled.

After the 1857 Sepoy rebellion, governance of India passed from the British East India Company to the British Crown. The colonial administration under Queen Victoria set about remaking itself.

Lord Canning appointed the first police commission on August 17, 1860, headed by MH Court. The colonial government of British India then enacted the Police Act on March 22, 1861, with a central purpose of tightening administrative control and creating an organised force capable of suppressing rebellion or public discontent.

The policing structure the Act created served mainly to uphold the colonial government’s authority and its system of rule. Accountability ran upwards to the executive rather than outwards to the public. That is fundamentally at odds with the principles of citizen-centred, service-oriented and accountable policing expected in an independent democracy.

The Police Regulations, Bengal, 1943 came later, setting out detailed procedures for police station management, investigation, arrest, record-keeping, discipline and the allocation of duties: the routine business of policing. The administrative and operational aspects of the 1861 framework subsequently became more thoroughly institutionalised.

The 1861 Act and a range of other colonial-era rules survived Bangladesh’s independence in 1971. The state changed; the basic relationship between the police and the executive did not. Analysts believe that is why the colonial inheritance has never been fully dismantled.

Maintaining the colonial structure makes it altogether impossible to free the police from political influence, according to Baharul Alam, a former inspector general of police.

Reform proposals had been drawn up and moves made to implement them since 2006, he told Bonik Barta, and the police themselves had proposed them.

“Legal reform was pursued at the time under a UNDP project, and during the Moeen U Ahmed–Fakhruddin government a draft Police Reform Act of 2008 was prepared to replace the 1861 Police Act. It proposed human rights protections, a police complaints commission and several other significant changes, along with penalties for unwarranted interference in police operations. Removing the force from the home ministry’s direct control was also under discussion,” he said.

Alam added that the draft was sent to the district level for comment, and more than 60 percent of respondents backed its enactment. “But in the end it effectively went into cold storage,” he said.

Police reform never received priority in the consensus commission’s deliberations under the former interim government, he added: “The Anti-Corruption Commission, the Election Commission and other institutions were treated as priorities, while police reform was neglected entirely.”

Successive governments since independence have proposed legal reform of the police, formed commissions and attempted institutional modernisation. A police commission was set up in 1978, followed in 1986 by another led by the then additional inspector general Taibuddin Ahmed, and in 1988 by one under Justice Aminur Rahman.

Justice Aminur Rahman’s commission produced a two-volume, 328-page report containing nearly 200 recommendations. It proposed reorganising police headquarters into four directorates, creating a separate police division within the home ministry, establishing new police stations and specialised units, and founding a Police Staff College.

Another attempt came in 2007, with a draft of a new police ordinance, proposing reduced political interference, ensuring transparency in recruitment, posting and promotion, establishing an independent police commission and setting up a separate mechanism for investigating complaints against the force.

The draft never became law. Work on a draft police ordinance resumed in 2013 under the now-deposed Awami League government (the party’s activities are now banned) but that too was never brought into force.

The most substantial institutional effort was the Police Reform Programme, run with support from the UNDP and Britain’s Department for International Development.

Its first phase began in late 2005 and ran until September 2009. A second phase continued until September 2014. The initiatives brought improvements in some areas, but fundamental shortcomings persisted in several, including legal and regulatory reform, institutional governance, capacity building, anti-corruption measures, and community policing.

The most recent attempt at reforming the force came after the July–August 2024 uprising and the change of government. What began as a student movement demanding reform of the quota system escalated into a mass protest. The police and other law-enforcement agencies used widespread force to suppress it. There were also cases of arbitrary arrest, detention and torture.

Over nearly 15 years of authoritarian rule, the Awami League (its activities are now banned) deployed the police and other security forces against critics and political opponents through enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, surveillance and torture. Institutions intended to provide independent oversight of the security forces and hold them to account were weakened.

The police were among the main pillars supporting that regime, and it was against this background that the last interim government formed a police reform commission following the political changeover of August 5.

Because the 1861 Police Act and much of the colonial-era rulebook remain in force, the force has never become free of political influence, responsive to the public or independently accountable, those involved say.

Safar Raj Hossain, who headed the police administration reform commission, told Bonik Barta: “Freeing the police from political influence has been discussed for a long time. We have made recommendations on it and tried to secure an independent commission. Without an independent commission it will never be possible to free the police entirely from political influence, and for that the Constitution will also have to be amended. If the political leadership wants it, this reform can be carried out.”

“Police administration is bound up with the Constitution and with the wider structure of the state. So making the police genuinely independent and accountable will also require the necessary changes to that structure,” he added.

The commission’s report identifies reform of the colonial legal framework as one of the most vital areas for change.

On the 1861 Act specifically, it says the law must be amended as necessary, or an entirely new law enacted if required, to transform the police into a public-friendly and accountable force.

The provisions of the Police Regulations, Bengal (PRB), 1943, should likewise be amended or replaced by new regulations. The commission also called for the necessary amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1898, particularly regarding the use of force and the protection of human rights.

The reform commission’s recommendations cover a wide range: the exercise of police powers, powers of arrest, search, interrogation, human rights safeguards, accountability, recruitment and posting, investigation, and public-friendly policing. Among them are the reform of sections 54 and 167 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, effective implementation of High Court directives on arrest and interrogation on remand, and a separate room at police stations, enclosed by transparent glass, for questioning detainees.

The commission also recommended a five-stage policy on the use of force to minimise casualties and damage during public gatherings, and that no one should be presented to the media as a criminal before being finally convicted on the basis of evidence in judicial proceedings.

It strongly recommended that the National Human Rights Commission be empowered to take direct action when investigating allegations of human rights violations by members of law-enforcement agencies.

The reform commission reached a policy consensus on establishing a separate police commission to strengthen the force’s neutrality and accountability. Its proposals also cover transparency in recruitment, posting, transfer and promotion; scrapping political vetting during background checks; increasing the representation of female officers; strengthening community policing; and reforming officers’ working conditions, housing, leave and mental health support.

In its background analysis, the commission highlighted the historic deployment of the police to serve partisan interests and the misuse of the force through politically aligned officers.

Nur Khan Liton, a human rights activist and member of the commission investigating enforced disappearances under the last interim government, told Bonik Barta that colonial-era laws and regulations still shape police operations.

The Police Regulations, Bengal, and the Code of Criminal Procedure both carry the legacy of colonial rule, he said. “The public had expected the police reform commission to bring fundamental change to that framework, and it made many important recommendations. Because they haven’t been implemented, the old structure remains in place. The police still depend on the decisions of the political leadership as a result and can’t establish themselves as an independent, professional institution.”

Not all the commission’s recommendations can be implemented immediately, Liton noted, but an independent oversight committee should be set up as a “matter of urgency”. Such a body would monitor police operations, investigate complaints brought against officers and report regularly to the government. That could secure accountability while paving the way for a professional force free of political interference, he said.

Because of the structure of state administration, the police serve whichever party holds power, experts say. Executive influence over recruitment, posting, transfer and administrative control has not been removed, preventing the force from freeing itself from governing-party influence, achieving true independence and becoming responsive to the public.

“The police under colonial rule were structurally deployed as an instrument for carrying out the government’s will. Independence didn’t sever the force from that influence, resulting in a legal and institutional divide between the police and the public,” said Dr Tawohidul Haque, an associate professor at Dhaka University’s Institute of Social Welfare and Research.

He told Bonik Barta: “Past governments have attempted to draft new police laws without bringing them to fruition. Our expectation is that the current government will enact a new, fit-for-purpose law for the police. The relationship between the government and the police should rest on coordination and statutory duty, not simply on obedience to orders. The police must be given the operational independence to carry out their duties impartially.”