Issues and Challenges of Police Investigative Practices in Bangladesh: An Empirical Study

Abstract

On the basis of face-to-face interviews of police investigators, supervising officials and senior police officers in Bangladesh, this chapter has examined the problem of criminal investigation as a part of police modernization in Bangladesh. The significance of criminal investigation is based on two major doctrines or principles of modern criminal justice: the “presumption of innocence,” and the doctrine of the “beyond a reasonable doubt.” In the criminal justice systems based particularly on the Common Law tradition, the doctrines of the presumption of innocence and beyond a reasonable doubt are at the core of the due process of law. Under the Police Reform Program (PRP) initiated in 2005, Bangladesh has achieved some considerable progress in reforming police organization, integrating technology into policing, improving police training and education, integrating women into policing, and developing a philosophy of community policing. The domain of criminal investigation, however, is still predominantly based on the culture of confession. In Bangladesh, there is still a high reliance on confessions and oral evidence in constructing cases for prosecution, and this is, by and large, true of all the countries of South Asia that are still governed by the British Colonial Police Act of 1861 and the Indian Evidence Act of 1872.