Office Assistant

The territorial area of Bangladesh, once part of the Indian Subcontinent, traces its legal history to 1726 when King George I issued a Charter reforming the judicial administration of the Presidency towns of Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras, establishing civil and criminal courts that derived authority from the King. During the Mughal era, the East India Company, with the permission of the Mughal Emperor, founded these Presidency towns and gradually introduced the English legal system, marking the entry of English judicial principles into the region. The 1726 Charter also introduced the system of appeals to the Privy Council in England. To regulate the Company’s growing powers, the East India Company Regulating Act of 1773 placed it under British government control and authorized the establishment of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William, Calcutta, through Letters Patent issued in 1774. This Court, as a Court of Record, had authority over civil and criminal matters in Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. In 1833, the Privy Council became an Imperial Court of ultimate authority, ensuring judicial uniformity across the British Empire. Later, the Indian High Courts Act of 1861 reorganized the judicial system, abolishing the Supreme Courts and creating High Courts at Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras with original and appellate jurisdictions. Following the partition of India in 1947, the High Court of Judicature for East Bengal was established in Dhaka under the Indian Independence Act, vested with appellate, civil, and original jurisdiction. With the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in 1956, the Supreme Court of Pakistan replaced the Federal Court as the apex judicial authority over provincial High Courts, including Dhaka. The Dhaka High Court was empowered to issue writs such as Habeas Corpus, Mandamus, Prohibition, Quo Warranto, and Certiorari, and had the power to declare any unconstitutional law void, laying the foundation for Bangladesh’s modern judiciary.