CrPC : The dark forest of our politics

The Code of Criminal Procedure, forming the architecture of liberty, autonomy and justice was inherited by Bangladesh; a country which emerged from war in 1971 and fell into political turbulence such asassassinations, coups, and shifting regimes making the judiciary a political landmine. Political leaders feared that loosening the colonial machinery would invite chaos. Thus, magistracy, police powers, and remand practices were retained making the law mirror the British fear of rebellion,instability, disunity, and delegitimization.Therefore, born under the colonial fear of disorder, it has evolved not merely as a procedural framework but as an instrument of political survival.

 

For well over a century, Section 173 of the Code of Criminal Procedurestood as one of those curious relics of empire which persist long after the empire itself has dissolved. It provided that an investigation, however protracted or meandering, must culminate in a single and definitive report known as the "charge sheet". Until that moment of finality arrived, the individual suspected of crime occupied a legal limbo, invading the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" and leaving the formally accused never fully free of suspicion and frequently subjected to the subtle and not-so-subtle pressures of the criminal process. No intermediate accounting of the police was required, and no early judicial scrutiny was envisaged.

 

Justice, being not merely a terminal verdict but a continuous process of correction. The introduction of Section 173Ainto the Code of Criminal Procedure of Bangladesh, exemplifies such logical development. It represents an attempt to reconcile two competing imperatives: the efficient progression of criminal investigation and the moral necessity of sparing innocent persons from prolonged suspicion.

Section 173A, although presented as a procedural refinement within the CrPC, must be understood as a juridical response to deeper socio-economic contradictions

 

The provision allows a supervising police authority' either the Police Commissioner, District Superintendent of Police, or an equivalent officerto call for an interim investigation report before the investigation reaches its final conclusion under Section 173. This is significant for two reasons:

 

It acknowledges that prolonged investigations often cast a shadow upon numerous individuals, some of whom may be only tenuously linked to the alleged offence. It grants the supervising authority the rational power to examine whether the continuation of such suspicion is warranted by evidence.

 

 

Sub-section (2) carries the logical consequence of this new mechanism. If an interim report reveals that the evidence against a particular accused is insufficient, the supervising authority may require that the matter be placed before the Magistrate or Tribunal. The court, if satisfied, may order the discharge of the accused, all the while permitting the investigation to continue against others. The procedure is therefore not an exoneration but a suspension of the presumption of involvement, a procedural acknowledgment that the individual should not be subjected to needless hardship purely for being named at an early stage.

 

Sub-section (3), in turn, reflects the cautious empiricism that a sound legal system must maintain. The law states that even after an interim discharge, if later and more substantive evidence implicates the same person, the Investigating Officer is not barred from including his name in the final police report. It is, in effect, a recognition that human understanding-particularly in criminal matters-advances by degrees, and the law must permit corrections where new facts demand them.

 

Section 173A, although presented as a procedural refinement within the CrPC, must be understood as a juridical response to deeper socio-economic contradictions embedded in the Bangladeshi state apparatus. In a society where the coercive power of the state often intersects with entrenched class hierarchies and patronage networks, the criminal investigation process historically functioned as an instrument not merely of justice but of social discipline. The introduction of an "interim investigation report" reflects the ruling class's growing awareness that the unchecked accumulation of accused persons, many of whom are economically vulnerable, generates political risk, administrative overload, and international reputational costs.

 

By enabling early discharge of those lacking sufficient evidence, Section 173A reduces the surplus population trapped in prolonged criminal suspicion, thereby easing pressures on prisons, courts, and law-enforcement agencies. Yet this reform, while appearing to humanize the system, simultaneously consolidates bureaucratic power by giving senior police officers heightened authority to decide whose names may temporarily fall out of the machinery of accusation.

 

In Marxist terms, it is a dialectical compromise; the state seeks to preserve its legitimacy by correcting the most visible injustices of the investigative process, but the fundamental imbalance of power between the investigating authority and the citizen remains unchanged. The amendment therefore represents not a radical restructuring of criminal justice, but a technocratic adjustment designed to stabilize the system while leaving intact the structural conditions that allow over-policing, political misuse of criminal cases, and the commodification of legal vulnerability.

 

 

The struggle between power and justice is etched into our legal institutions. It gestures toward fairness while entrusting fairness to the very hands that have long blurred law with authority. The amendment may lighten the burden of suspicion for some, but it leaves unanswered the question that defines every criminal justice system: who watches the watchers? It leaves behind questions about the capitalization of justice and human liberty and the micro-economic value of human freedom. Until those questions are confronted, each new provision, however well-intentioned and rightfully introduced will remain only a flicker of light inside a forest still defined by the shadows containing in itself the interstellar beings that lurk within.