Police Accountability Act Enacted: Mandatory Body-Worn Cameras and Independent Oversight Ensure Citizen Safety and Civil Dignity

In a momentous legislative transformation emancipating national law enforcement from archaic colonial policing doctrines, parliament has enacted the historic 'Police Service Reform Act.' Drafted through collaborative consultations between the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Law Commission, the statutory overhaul repositions the police force into a human-rights-centered, professional, and community-responsive public safety service, instituting uncompromising institutional firewalls against custodial abuses and arbitrary harassment.

Central to the enforcement protocols is the mandatory deployment of tamper-evident, high-definition body-worn cameras equipped with thermal night-vision across all uniformed patrol officers and traffic enforcement details. Officers are legally mandated to keep optical recording devices active during all vehicular stops, interrogations, and arrests. Audio-visual feeds transmit securely into immutable central evidence clouds inaccessible to field tampering, functioning as admissible digital evidence before courts of law.

To address citizen grievances with uncompromised impartiality, the legislation establishes an autonomous 'Police Complaints Commission' (PCC) chaired by a retired Supreme Court appellate justice. Breaking decisively from the flawed tradition of internal departmental self-investigation, any citizen complaint alleging corruption, brutality, or procedural infractions will be investigated independently by the commission, with statutory powers to compel testimony, order immediate suspensions, and initiate formal criminal indictments.

Police Headquarters confirmed that all community police stations (Thanas) have activated modernized one-stop citizen reception centers, backed by an end-to-end digital General Diary (GD) and First Information Report (FIR) system. Citizens can submit statutory reports directly via encrypted mobile interfaces with real-time tracking, eradicating illicit extortion demands and establishing transparent civic access.

Civil rights advocates warmly commended the legislation as an indispensable pillar of civilized governance. Rebuilding the police force into an empathetic, accountable civic partner restores societal trust, deterring criminal behavior while ensuring that every citizen's fundamental constitutional dignity is safeguarded.