An Ansar member's reported admission on June 24 this year to taking part in ‘policing’ at Dhaka's Ramna Park has thrown fresh light on Bangladesh's expanding culture of moral policing, where individuals and groups enforce self-defined codes of morality outside the legal framework. What often begins with harassment over clothing or behaviour has increasingly escalated into attacks on cultural events, religious minorities and vigilante violence.
Women have borne the heaviest burden. Since late 2024, incidents have ranged from women being harassed for smoking in Dhaka's Lalmatia, wearing a bindi at Farmgate or Western clothes in Narsingdi, to a filmmaker being spat at for not wearing a headscarf and a Dhaka University student seeing her alleged harasser released on bail just a day after filing a complaint. Similar incidents were reported in Cox's Bazar, Shyamoli, Bhola and Savar, where women were publicly humiliated, assaulted or filmed under the guise of enforcing morality.
Rights advocates say victim blaming, weak law enforcement and the absence of any mechanism to track prosecutions have entrenched impunity.
Bangladesh's Sufi and Baul traditions have also come under sustained attack as police recorded 44 attacks on at least 40 shrines immediately after the change of government in 2024, while rights groups documented between 90 and 97 shrine attacks by the end of 2025, leaving three people dead and 468 injured. Historic shrines in Narayanganj, Sherpur and Mymensingh were vandalised, while in April 2025 Sufi devotee Abdur Rahman was hacked to death in Kushtia after an old video resurfaced online. Across the country, Baul festivals were cancelled, performances disrupted and, in some cases, police themselves confiscated musical instruments.
Young people have increasingly become targets simply for occupying public space or failing to conform to arbitrary standards of appearance. In February 2026, police detained three Dhaka University students during an operation at Suhrawardy Udyan, while 12 teenagers aged between 14 and 17 were detained in Chandpur. Earlier incidents saw 14 students in Sirajganj, around 50 students in Natore and seven madrasa students in Lakshmipur subjected to forced haircuts, while a school in Pabna made a specific hairstyle compulsory under threat of disciplinary action.
Mainstream cultural institutions have not been spared. During the unrest following the August 2024 political transition, Chhayanaut and Bangladesh Udichi Shilpigosthi saw their archives and instruments burned. In 2025, a Pohela Boishakh concert was cancelled after mob vandalism, the historic Mangal Shobhajatra was renamed under pressure, and a stage play in Kapasia was halted during its 52nd consecutive annual performance. During Ramadan, after Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Shafiqur Rahman called for restaurants to close during fasting hours, customers in Lakshmipur, Hatiya, Muladi and Shibchar, including elderly people, were beaten or publicly humiliated for eating during the day.
The policing of appearance has extended beyond women. Videos circulated online show homeless people, shrine dwellers and Sufi followers having their hair and beards forcibly cut under the guise of human service. In Rupganj, three women accused of theft were tied to a tree, beaten and had their hair cut off, while entertainer Hero Alam said police pressured him in 2022 to sign an undertaking restricting his performances and even suggested to change his name.
Moral policing in Bangladesh is driven by both organised groups and self-appointed vigilantes. A loose religious platform known as Tawhidi Janata, alongside supporters of Hefazat-e-Islam, Islami Andolan Bangladesh and sections of madrasa networks, become increasingly active. The Centre for Governance Studies reported a sharp rise in such interventions after August 2024, while Human Rights Watch's January 2026 report said that radical religious groups had exploited the political vacuum to tighten their influence over public life. Beyond organised groups, neighbours, village arbitrators, schoolteachers and local vigilantes have imposed their own punishments through forced haircuts, public humiliation and informal tribunals.
Even the law enforcement agencies at times reinforced moral policing rather than restrained the trend. Couples continue to be detained for sitting together in parks despite no legal prohibition. A Barishal police officer forcibly changed a teenager's hairstyle, while in February 2026 police detained teenagers from a Dhanmondi park simply for being outdoors at night. State institutions have also drawn criticism. The Public Health Institute withdrew a 2020 dress directive after public backlash, while Bangladesh Bank scrapped a 2025 dress code for female officers following accusations that it imposed a narrowly defined religious standard.
Rights groups argue that Bangladesh has no specific offence called moral policing, although existing laws, including Sections 166, 340, 354, 355, 383, 385, 386 and 503 of the Penal Code, 1860, the Nari o Shishu Nirjatan Domon Ain, and Articles 31, 32, 35 and 39 of the Constitution, provide sufficient legal grounds to prosecute offenders.
Bangladesh's long tradition of religious pluralism, Sufi humanism and cultural diversity, stands in sharp contrast to the rise of moral policing.
Unless the state responds with visible enforcement rather than rhetoric alone, they warn, the space for constitutional freedoms will continue to shrink as vigilante justice increasingly supplants the rule of law.
