On 20 October, police raided a house in Purbachal, detaining 85 people — 59 men and 26 women. The entire operation was recorded, following the detainees through the house. The videos later made it onto the news as well as social media.
One news outlet took it even further, publishing photographs and extensive personal details of those detained, including their occupations, educational backgrounds and, in some instances, their fathers' names and identities. The detainees were subsequently given varying terms of imprisonment.
But the published photographs and personal profiles did not show what evidence applied to which individual, how individual culpability was determined or whether the summary proceedings met the requirements of due process.
Raided for drugs, prosecuted for public nuisance
Md Tawohidul Haque, associate professor at the Institute of Social Welfare and Research, Dhaka University, identifies an immediate contradiction between how the Purbachal operation was presented and how the detainees were ultimately prosecuted.
"We first learnt about the party and the anti-drug raid at a DIG's residence through media reports," he said. "However, the subsequent cases were filed on grounds of public nuisance."
If police suspected drug consumption, they could have tested those present and proceeded against individuals for whom evidence existed. Merely being inside the property could not establish that every person had consumed drugs.
"Had the authorities taken action against those found to have consumed drugs, there would at least have been a basic degree of consistency between the stated purpose of the anti-drug operation and the measures taken," he said.
Instead, the drug allegation that gave the raid its public drama was not apparently the basis of the ensuing cases. It raises questions about why an anti-drug narrative was used to expose scores of people when the resulting legal action concerned something else, such as breakdowns in informal arrangements over proceeds or benefits.
"The kind of theatre staged in the name of raids — where one account is presented publicly while the actual enforcement measures tell a different story — allows people to be publicly humiliated," Haque further said.
Police may have legitimate reasons to record an operation. Video can document where evidence was found, how officers entered a property and whether procedures were followed. It can protect investigators against false allegations. It can also protect defendants by exposing violence, unlawful searches or inconsistencies in the official account.
But such recordings belong to the evidentiary process. Publishing it online or allowing journalists to film frightened detainees inside a police-controlled scene serves another purpose — publication, and it requires a separate legal and ethical justification.
The Criminal Procedure Code gives police investigative and search powers under prescribed conditions.
Section 165 permits searches during an investigation where the legal requirements are satisfied. Sections 161 and 162 regulate police questioning and restrict the evidentiary use of statements made during an investigation. A confession must be recorded before a magistrate under Section 164.
An on-camera interrogation is therefore not a lawful substitute for judicial procedure.
The police built the stage
Sabir Mustafa, former head of BBC Bangla, said it remained unclear who filmed parts of the Purbachal raid. Yet cameras entered areas that would normally be under police control.
Law-enforcement agencies, he said, have helped establish this culture by supplying newsrooms with photographs and identities of people detained over alleged offences.
"Even when the detainee was only a suspect, his photo was given to the media, often with a signboard calling him a criminal hung around his neck," Mustafa said. "This still happens."
Police decide who enters an operational area. They control the detainees and their movement. A person surrounded by officers cannot meaningfully consent to being filmed.
Barrister and human-rights lawyer Sara Hossain sees the footage as part of a longer law-enforcement practice rather than an isolated leak.
"In the past, when police arrested someone, they would place a sign around the person's neck labelling them a 'militant' or 'terrorist' and display them before television cameras," she said. "The present practice is a continuation of that culture.
"By doing so, they effectively declare someone a criminal," she said. "But whether that person has actually committed an offence must first be established through proper judicial scrutiny."
Sara Hossain rejected any retrospective defence based on the fact that some detainees were later convicted. When the footage was recorded, she noted, they had not been tried, formally charged or sentenced.
"Before trial — and even before a formal allegation has been brought — how can the authorities photograph or film someone without consent and place those images before the public?"
Police social-media rules recognise part of this danger. Article 10.12 of the Bangladesh Police Social Media Use Guidelines 2025 prohibits officers from publishing photographs or videos of operations without prior approval. Yet a Prothom Alo investigation identified 107 Facebook accounts operated by police personnel, some carrying widely viewed footage of encounters with citizens.
When asked, DIG Md Shafiqul Islam, the Chief of the Detective Branch (DB), told TBS, "There are guidelines against such practices from the Police Headquarters. We have instructed our officers not to take journalists with them during raids. And we have also instructed them to protect the identities of the detained persons. We are looking into the matter."
When enforcement becomes moral policing
Advocate Manzur Al Matin, a Supreme Court lawyer and human-rights activist, argues that the Purbachal coverage went beyond reporting a police operation.
"The media are identifying them as drug users and publishing identifiable photographs and personal details before any offence has been proven," he said.
Publishing such information without establishing its necessity in the public interest, he said, infringes privacy, dignity and personal-data rights.
"Publicly shaming someone in this manner effectively amounts to imposing social punishment before a trial."
The distinction between crime and private behaviour is crucial. Socialising, listening to music, dancing or attending a mixed-gender gathering are not, by themselves, offences under Bangladeshi law.
According to Matin, presenting these activities as inherently criminal turns law enforcement into "moral policing" — the use of state authority to control lawful private behaviour and publicly punish those whose lifestyles offend particular social expectations, a position Sara Hossain supported as well.
Bangladesh may have social values that sit uneasily with bar or party culture. But cultural discomfort is not evidence of criminal liability. And the cost falls especially heavily on women. Once their images circulate, audiences may construct a sexual narrative regardless of the actual allegation. A woman is not merely identified. She is socially cast out.
"The most disgraceful thing was spreading those videos on social media, exposing the women's faces and humiliating them in public," Mustafa said.
What the Constitution protects
Article 31 of the Constitution guarantees protection of the law and prohibits action detrimental to life, liberty, body, reputation or property except in accordance with law. Reputation is expressly within the constitutional frame.
Article 32 protects life and personal liberty. Article 33 provides safeguards relating to arrest and detention. Article 35 establishes protections concerning trial and punishment. Article 43 protects the privacy of the home, correspondence and other means of communication, subject to lawful restrictions. Article 39 protects speech and press freedom.
"In the past, when police arrested someone, they would place a sign around the person's neck labelling them a 'militant' or 'terrorist' and display them before television cameras. The present practice is a continuation of that culture. By doing so, they effectively declare someone a criminal. But whether that person has actually committed an offence must first be established through proper judicial scrutiny."
Barrister Sara Hossain, human rights lawyer
But these guarantees do not cancel out one another. Press freedom does not make every detail obtained from police ethically publishable. Privacy does not require law-enforcement operations to be hidden from scrutiny.
Showing every detainee's face is not automatically necessary. Neither is naming their parents, employers or educational institutions when those facts have no demonstrated connection to the alleged offence. And leaking them to the media is certainly illegal.
The High Court has already objected
The High Court has repeatedly opposed law-enforcement agencies presenting detainees as criminals before trial.
In 2012, it directed law enforcers not to expose arrested or detained people before the media, describing the practice as illegal and unconstitutional. It also questioned the legality of making detainees speak before cameras.
In 2015, the court expressed concern over a police superintendent presenting an arrested man and allegedly recovered explosives at a press conference. It asked the inspector general of police to instruct law-enforcement agencies to refrain from projecting accused people before the media before producing them in court.
A 2019 ruling again called for regulations governing how detainees are presented and what information may be disclosed while an investigation is under way.
Newsrooms cannot outsource ethics to police
The media cannot defend harmful publication by saying that police supplied the material. Access is not justification.
The Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics distinguishes between legal access and ethical publication. It asks journalists to respect the presumption of innocence, consider whether suspects need to be identified and weigh the lasting consequences of circulating personal information.
Mustafa argues that Bangladesh's media industry has not developed sufficiently consistent editorial standards. Mainstream organisations cannot plead the incentives facing individual content creators. They have editors, institutional experience and the capacity to train reporters.
Sara Hossain argued that the police operation was followed by a second, media-driven operation against the detainees and their families.
"Several television channels, online platforms and newspapers appear to have launched a second operation of their own," she said. "The police conducted the first raid; sections of the media then began another — targeting the detainees, their families and their wider social circles."
She compared the spectacle to a village shalish conducted nationally. Where public humiliation once involved garlands of shoes or social exclusion, it can now be imposed through television footage, searchable news reports and viral social-media posts.
"The method is modern, but the punishment remains public humiliation."
Newsrooms should obscure faces unless identification serves a demonstrable public interest. Names of relatives, employers and educational institutions should be withheld unless materially connected to wrongdoing. Police-supplied claims should be verified, not reproduced as a digital charge sheet. Headlines and thumbnails must distinguish detention, allegation, charge and conviction.