RAB abolished in law, but new SRB inherits powers and accountability gaps

The law replacing Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion with the new Special Response Battalion formally abolishes RAB, but it transfers much of the existing force directly into its successor without requiring personnel vetting, an audit of its records or a clear institutional break between the two bodies.

The Special Response Battalion Bill 2026, which has now been passed by Parliament, repeals the legal provisions under which RAB was created and establishes the SRB as a new specialised force.

But Section 27 provides for the immediate transfer of RAB’s personnel, establishments, authority, records, property, contracts and liabilities to the SRB. The law contains no requirement for fresh recruitment or screening of transferred officers.

That distinction is significant because abolishing RAB had been a longstanding BNP position.

Khaleda Zia called for its abolition in 2014, saying changing a few officers would not address the problem. The BNP repeated the position in December 2024 in its proposal to the Police Reform Commission, arguing that the Armed Police Battalion and regular police could perform RAB’s necessary functions.

Human Rights Watch, the UN Human Rights Office and Bangladesh’s Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances have also recommended abolition.

The issue was raised again when the legislation reached Parliament on September 3. Opposition Chief Whip Nahid Islam reminded lawmakers that political parties, including the BNP, had promised to abolish RAB before the election. Opposition Leader Shafiqur Rahman backed abolition but called for wider discussion and warned against merely changing the force’s name or operating method.

One of the immediate risks created by the transition concerns RAB’s records.

Section 27 says its books, registers and other documents will pass to the SRB but does not require them to be frozen, inventoried or independently secured before transfer. Nor does it identify officers responsible for handing over and receiving individual records or prescribe consequences if material disappears during the transition.

Those materials potentially include arrest and custody registers, operational files, posting orders, duty rosters, vehicle and wireless logs, telephone data, electronic files, CCTV footage and weapons registers.

Some could constitute evidence in enforced-disappearance and other criminal proceedings now before the International Crimes Tribunal, investigation teams and ordinary courts.

The problem is not simply whether a document survives.

If the authenticity of a transferred record is challenged, prosecutors may have to establish who controlled it throughout the transition and whether it remained unaltered. The law’s statutory transfer of the documents does not by itself establish that chain of custody. A record could therefore survive the institutional transition but lose evidentiary value if its integrity cannot be demonstrated.

The accountability mechanism created for the SRB also remains largely within the executive and the force itself.

Section 24 establishes a six-member complaints committee headed by an SRB Additional Director General, with the SRB Director for Legal and Media serving as member-secretary. Its remaining members come through the Home Ministry, Police Headquarters or government nomination.

The committee can recommend action but cannot impose it. The law does not require it to publish findings, inform complainants about outcomes, provide protection to witnesses or complainants, or automatically refer evidence of criminal offences to investigators or prosecutors.

Its quarterly reports go to the government through the SRB Director General rather than directly to a parliamentary committee.

Another provision could allow allegations against seconded personnel to move outside that process.

Under Section 19, once a preliminary inquiry finds an allegation against a seconded officer prima facie credible, the Director General must send the officer and the report back to the parent organisation. But the law imposes no corresponding obligation on that organisation to report what disciplinary or criminal action, if any, was subsequently taken.

At the same time, the SRB retains extensive coercive powers.

Sections 12 to 15 empower it to enter premises, search, seize property, arrest people and investigate criminal offences. Arrested people and seized materials must eventually be transferred to the nearest police station, but the law creates no routine district-level or judicial supervision of SRB operations before that happens.

Overall supervision rests with the Inspector General of Police. That differs from ordinary policing, where district or metropolitan commanders and magistrates routinely receive arrest, search, seizure and case records, providing several levels at which discrepancies can potentially be detected.

Training is another unresolved area.

The law requires SRB personnel to undergo training, but its duration and detailed requirements are left to subsequent rules. At the same time, an officer of sub-inspector rank or above receives the powers of a police investigating officer. The legislation does not expressly make the exercise of those powers conditional on first completing and passing the relevant training.

That could be particularly important because the SRB, like RAB, is a composite force drawing personnel from the police, armed forces and other services whose professional training differs.

The legislation does introduce changes that strengthen formal police control. The SRB Director General must be a serving Additional Inspector General of Police, while investigations must follow the Code of Criminal Procedure and Police Regulations. But the government retains discretion over the force’s composition, and the law fixes no ratio between police and armed forces personnel.

Questions also remain over protection for personnel who refuse unlawful commands.

The law limits disciplinary offences involving disobedience to refusal of a lawful order, meaning refusal to carry out an unlawful order is not expressly an offence. But it creates no specific protection against retaliation for an officer who refuses an illegal operational instruction or reports wrongdoing.

That omission sits alongside considerable disciplinary powers within the command structure. Personnel can face detention and other measures capable of affecting postings and careers. Internal grievances can be brought before the complaints committee, but that body is chaired and administered by senior SRB officers, can only recommend action and provides no statutory confidentiality or whistleblower protection.

Perhaps the most consequential ambiguity concerns civilian custody.

Section 13 uses the term “detain” in relation to civilians, while the statutory definition of detention applies to SRB personnel confined for disciplinary purposes. The law therefore does not separately define the scope and limits of civilian detention by the SRB.

An arrested person must be handed to the nearest police station “without delay,” but no maximum period is specified and the legislation does not explicitly state when that period begins. The SRB is also permitted to maintain custody and interrogation rooms.

That carries particular significance given Bangladesh’s history of enforced disappearances. The Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances found that people had been held at undeclared RAB facilities without lawful custody records and that detention facilities and evidence had been altered even after the change of government.

The law does not require publication of every SRB site or mandate a numbered custody record beginning from the moment the force first takes control of a person. Safeguards applying only to formally designated custody or interrogation rooms could therefore leave a gap between an apprehension and the point at which a person formally enters recorded custody.

The legislative process itself was compressed. The analysis of the law says that, apart from publication of the draft online for a short period, there was no wider consultation, while the parliamentary committee was given four working days to examine legislation creating a force with arrest, search, seizure and investigative powers.

With the legislation now passed, the question has shifted from whether Parliament will abolish RAB to what abolition means in practice.

The law eliminates RAB as a legal entity, changes aspects of its command structure and explicitly subjects investigations to criminal procedure. But personnel, establishments, records, property and institutional responsibilities move directly into the SRB, while several safeguards sought in response to RAB’s record — independent complaints oversight, mandatory personnel vetting, explicit custody-time limits, protection of evidence and whistleblower safeguards — were not written into the legislation.

The distinction could also matter internationally. RAB remains subject to US sanctions. Whether foreign governments regard the SRB as an institution sufficiently distinct from its predecessor could depend not only on the new force’s statutory name and structure, but on its personnel, command, accountability mechanisms and practices.

The test for the new law will therefore be whether replacing RAB with the SRB produces an institutional break in practice, or whether the transfer provisions allow the structure and accountability problems associated with the old force to survive under a new legal identity.

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