Arrest Without Warrant: Police Powers and Individual Rights in Bangladesh

Introduction

The power of the police to arrest a person without judicial authority or a warrant is considered one of the most debated issues in criminal justice.¹ This is the point at which the state’s duty to maintain public order and security often conflicts with its constitutional duty to protect individual liberty.² In a state governed by democracy and the rule of law, personal liberty should not be curtailed without proper judicial authorization. In Bangladesh, however, section 54 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) 1898 gives the police broad scope to arrest without a warrant.³

In principle, this power was intended to allow the police to act quickly in critical situations to prevent crime. In practice, however, its application has often turned into an abuse of power, and its frequent pairing with remand under section 167 of the CrPC has repeatedly led to unlawful detention and custodial abuse.⁴

Constitutional Guarantees

The Constitution supplies the normative counterweight to this statutory discretion. Article 27 guarantees equality before the law.⁵ Article 31 entitles every person to the protection of law and to be treated only in accordance with law.⁶ Similarly, Article 32 protects life and personal liberty.⁷ Article 33 addresses arrest and detention specifically, requiring that an arrested person be informed of the grounds of arrest and be permitted to consult a lawyer of their choice.⁸ Article 35 supplies the trial-related cluster of rights, including, under clause (4), the privilege against self-incrimination — no accused person may be compelled to be a witness against himself — and, under clause (5), an unqualified prohibition on torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment or treatment.⁹ Read together, these provisions leave little room for a remand practice built on coercion: information extracted from a person in custody through duress sits in direct conflict with Article 35(4), while the ill-treatment often used to extract it offends Article 35(5), irrespective of how grave the underlying offence may be.¹⁰

The Judicial Impact of BLAST v Bangladesh

Under the original framework, section 54(1) of the CrPC gave police officers broad power to arrest a person without a warrant on the basis of reasonable suspicion or credible information of a cognizable offence — whether punishable by less than seven years’ imprisonment or extending to seven years. In practice, however, police officers often made arrests without any credible source, relying only on unverified suspicion, and then sought remand under section 167 of the CrPC. This type of remand sometimes turned into physical torture or mental pressure used to extract a statement, in violation of constitutional protections and inadmissible under section 24 of the Evidence Act 1872.¹¹ The constitutional scholar Mahmudul Islam observed that, historically, magistrates were often granted — and granted — remand orders without adequately examining the case diary or determining whether the arrest itself was lawful.¹² Under CrPC section 167(2A), the magistrate has the authority to have the accused examined at a government hospital when police request remand.

This systemic problem reached a major turning point in BLAST v Bangladesh, following the custodial death of Dhaka University student Shamim Reza Rubel, who was arrested under section 54 and subsequently remanded under section 167.¹³ The High Court found excessive and uncontrolled use of sections 54 and 167 and issued fifteen directives to prevent arbitrary arrest.¹⁴ The Court also held that a person could not be arrested under section 3 of the Special Powers Act on the basis of section 54, and that where police fail to produce a proper case diary, the magistrate may release the accused under section 169 of the CrPC.

The Torture and Custodial Death (Prevention) Act 2013

Parliament’s legislative response arrived a decade after the High Court’s judgment, in the form of the Torture and Custodial Death (Prevention) Act, 2013 — the first law of its kind in South Asia, enacted partly to fulfil Bangladesh’s obligations under the Convention Against Torture.¹⁵ The Act criminalizes the extraction of confessions through torture by police, the Rapid Action Battalion, Border Guard Bangladesh, intelligence agencies, and other custodians; prescribes rigorous life imprisonment for custodial death; and empowers a magistrate, on credible information, to take cognizance of torture suo motu, without waiting for a formal complaint.¹⁶ It was, in principle, a direct legislative embodiment of Article 35(5). In practice, however, its record has been dispiriting: human rights monitors have documented that only a handful of cases have ever been filed under the Act since 2013, with prosecutions rarely reaching completion — a pattern widely attributed to an entrenched culture of impunity within law enforcement institutions.¹⁷

Recent Amendments to Sections 46, 54 and 54A and Arrest Procedures

The 2025 CrPC Amendment makes a significant change to Chapter V by introducing legal safeguards and procedural requirements intended to limit the broad police powers inherited from the colonial period.

Amended Section 54

The amended Section 54 imposes stricter conditions on arrest without warrant. The police can no longer arrest on the basis of mere suspicion alone. The officer must have a reasonable belief — grounded in a specific complaint or independently verified information — that the arrest is necessary to prevent the person from committing a further offence, to ensure a proper investigation, to prevent interference with witnesses, or to ensure that the person appears before the court. Alternatively, the officer must record in the official diary both the reason for, and the proper grounds of, the arrest.

Newly Enforced Sections 46A–54A

New sections 46A to 46E impose concrete pre- and post-arrest obligations: arresting officers must carry and disclose identification, prepare a written arrest memorandum, digitally record arrest details in the police General Diary, and facilitate access to a lawyer, generally within twelve hours.¹⁸ Section 54A, newly enacted in the 2025 Amendment, mandates disclosure of the grounds of arrest to the person being arrested.

Refinement to Section 167

The 2025 amendment to section 167 of the CrPC introduces strong safeguards against the misuse of police remand. Police must now submit detailed forwarding reports and case diaries. Where the accused is seriously ill or injured, production before the magistrate may be conducted by video link, which preserves judicial oversight while avoiding unnecessary hardship to the accused.¹⁹

Persisting Gaps and the Way Forward

Legal reform of this kind reduces the chances of abuse, but it does not eliminate it. The 2025 Amendment, like the 2013 Act and the 2003 guidelines before it, depends on the institutions involved: magistrates who actually scrutinize remand applications rather than approving them routinely; police who develop real skill in forensic work and investigation, so that a confession is no longer the fastest route to a conviction; and oversight bodies willing to take action against officers under the Torture Act rather than treating custodial injury as routine. Bangladesh’s history over the more than 25 years spanning Rubel’s death in 1998, the Guidelines case, the 2013 Act, and the 2025 Amendment shows that the law itself has been moving in the right direction. Whether that improvement actually makes custody safer for the person arrested depends on how these laws are implemented, on the continued vigilance of civil society groups such as BLAST and Ain o Salish Kendra — both active on this issue since 1998 — and on the judiciary and the executive. The twenty-four-hour rule and the prohibition on torture must be treated not as aspirations but as firm rules that are actually enforced. Although significant steps have been taken by the legal authorities, there should be strict and rigorous enforcement to ensure these laws deliver real justice. Whether they are enforced properly must be actively monitored by the relevant legal authorities, particularly the Law Commission and the judiciary. These amended provisions should also be periodically reviewed to determine whether further clarification is needed to give full effect to the constitutional rights they are meant to protect.

Where the Framework Still Falls Short

The first gap is the capacity of the subordinate judiciary and the prevailing remand culture. Even though section 167 demands the application of judicial mind,²⁰ magistrates in subordinate courts — particularly given their overwhelming caseloads — are often unable to conduct proceedings as rigorously as the provision requires. Without mandatory body-worn cameras, digital arrest registries, and automatic statutory compensation for victims of unlawful arrest under Section 54, police officers may continue to carry out informal detentions before recording formal arrests. Statutory text alone cannot dismantle deeply entrenched field-level policing habits.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Although the amended Section 54, the BLAST directives, and Section 54A represent a substantial effort, a significant gap remains: proper enforcement. For that reason:

1. There should be an independent Police Complaints Commission to investigate arbitrary arrest and custodial misconduct.²⁰
2. The National Legal Aid Services Organisation (NLASO) should expand its operations broadly, with a 24-hour immediate representation window during pretrial detention.
3. Strict judicial accountability should be enforced under section 220 against officers who carry out warrantless arrests without factual justification.²¹

Protecting liberty does not weaken law enforcement; it ensures the government does what it is meant to do. A government bound by its own rules, and accountable for how it treats the people in its custody, is not a weaker government but a more legitimate one. That accountability — not the absence of police power, but its proper limitation — is what personal liberty ultimately protects: the assurance that the state cannot take away a person’s freedom without lawful justification.

Endnote(S):

1. Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust v Bangladesh (2003) 55 DLR 363 (HCD).
2. Mahmudul Islam, Constitutional Law of Bangladesh (3rd edn, Mullick Brothers 2012) 275–280.
3. Muhammad Nurul Huda, ‘Section 54 Cr.PC: Indiscretions and Imperatives’, The Daily Star <https://www.thedailystar.net/op-ed/politics/section-54-crpc-indiscretions-and-imperatives-1236361> accessed 5 August 2026.
4. BLAST v Bangladesh (2003) 55 DLR (HCD) 363.
5. Constitution of Bangladesh, art 27.
6. ibid, art 31.
7. ibid, art 32.
8. ibid, art 33.
9. ibid, art 35(4) and (5).
10. ibid (n 2) para 2.135 and 2.152.
11. The Evidence Act, 1872 <http://bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd/act-24/section-4778.html> accessed 5 August 2026.
12. Mahmudul Islam, Constitutional Law of Bangladesh (3rd edn, Mullick Brothers 2012) 275–280.
13. BLAST v Bangladesh 69 DLR AD 63.
14. ibid.
15. Torture and Custodial Death (Prevention) Act, 2013 (Act No. 50 of 2013).
16. ibid, ss 4, 5 and 15.
17. ‘Bangladesh: Heed UN Recommendations on Torture’, Human Rights Watch <https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/07/29/bangladesh-heed-un-recommendations-torture> accessed 5 August 2026.
18. ss 46A–46E CrPC.
19. Jeba Mobashwira and Rezoan Asraf, ‘Key Legislative Reforms of 2025 in Bangladesh’, The Daily Star <https://www.thedailystar.net/law-our-rights/news/key-legislative-reforms-2025-bangladesh-4074811> accessed 5 August 2026.
20. Code of Criminal Procedure 1898, s 167.
21. The Penal Code 1860, s 220.