Kotwal

Kotwal an officer entrusted with police and environment duties in urban areas during Turko-Afghan and Mughal times. The kotwal (from kot, fort; wal, keeper) was the chief of the city police. His main function was to maintain peace and social discipline and to keep the city clean environmentally. The ain-i-akbari of Abul Fazl describes in details the powers and functions of the City Kotwal.

According to the Ain and other contemporary accounts, Indian and foreign, the city kotwal had extensive duties to perform. These included maintenance of security as watch and ward, imposing curfew in the night, maintaining a register of houses and roads, making periodic census of householders, watching income and expenditure of the city people, spying on the suspicious state dignitaries, ensuring justice as a magistrate, watching public morals, overseeing markets and prices, regulating animal slaughter and crematories and so on.

The kotwal was appointed by a sanad, which gave him considerable autonomy and rank and status. The kotwal of Dhaka city functioned gloriously up to 1760. Since then the post of naib nazim was declining in power and functions. In 1793, the nizamat functions of the naib nazim were formally abolished and with that the institution of kotwal was also abolished. But symbolically, the kotwal institution continued down to 1843 when the nominal post of naib nazim was finally abolished. [Sirajul Islam]