The “Raja Law” and South Asian law’s long history with colonialism

The Punjab Control of Habitual Offenders and Anti-Social Behaviour Bill, 2026 was introduced in the Provincial Assembly of Pakistan on the 8th of June 2026, initially with barely any notice by the public. Until it was finally talked about and experts started realising how it would work. Officially the bill creates a three-tier structure of Intelligence Committees—provincial, divisional, and district—staffed by commissioners, police, and intelligence officials. According to the government, it is intended to combat organized crime, extortion, land grabbing, gang activity, drug trafficking, cybercrime, and other repeat offending by replacing outdated legislation with a modern framework. Supreme Court Advocate Saeed Yousaf Khan, an expert in criminal law, said amendments to the 1959 Goonda Act were aimed at making the law more effective. He said the legislation would enable strict action against hooliganism, extortion, gang-related crimes and the display of weapons at any place, including on social media.

But critics have a different outlook on the law and what it’s aiming to do. They contend that the bill's wording gives the executive excessive discretion and lacks sufficient judicial oversight

Opposition parties, lawyers, and civil-rights groups have described the bill as excessively sweeping and capable of being used to suppress dissent. Human rights organizations have also raised concerns about due process and civil liberties

In fact the lack of process or any binding definitions in the law, and its potential widespread control over everyday civilians, is leading critics to call it the “Raja Law” - linking it to similar controls over local citizens under the British “Raj”, and the laws they left behind. After all, this latest bill isn’t the first to connect back to the British legal system under colonial rule, and South Asia is still fighting many remnants of the laws and ideology left by the British. 

In a recent Dawn article, former police officer Tariq Khosa describes the government’s approach with this law as “the mindset of a ‘hard state’, ie, terrorising people into submission.” For much of British colonial rule, that was the approach the British government had towards South Asian locals - barring the select few who followed their rules and made it to the “top.” This new bill is meant to be replacing two laws, the first being The Restriction of Habitual Offe­nders (Punjab) Act, 1918, a colonial era law designed to restrict “habitual offenders.” What it still doesn’t do is fully define what those offences are, allowing a wide range of interpretation and excess power in the hands of those enforcing it. 

Pakistan’s very controversial blasphemy laws come from the same history. Pakistan inherited its blasphemy laws from its former British colonial rulers, who in 1860 introduced a set of laws related to religion in order to quell Hindu-Muslim violence in the Indian subcontinent.

The laws were strengthened in 1927 with the addition of a vague clause to criminalise “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious believers”. These updates were in response to the murder of Hindu man by Muslims. But it seems we’ve taken our colonial legacy and run much further with it. Between 1860 and 1947, when Pakistan gained independence from the British and broke away from India, there were just seven recorded cases of blasphemy, according to a report by the Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS).

Across the border in India, sedition laws are being increasingly used by the government to crackdown on free speech as well, and these too are inspired by the British legal system. ancestor: Section 124A of the 1860 Indian Penal Code (IPC), originally introduced by the British government in 1870. While the United Kingdom abolished its own sedition law in 2010, the law continues to be enforced across the Indian subcontinent.  In Pakistan, Manzoor Pashteen, a Pashtun Rights leader and the head of the Pashtun Protection Movement (Pashtun Tahafuz Movement or PTM), was arrested in January 2020 on similar charges of sedition for his criticism of the powerful Pakistani military under a similar 124A of the Penal Code. In Pakistan, Manzoor Pashteen is branded as an “Indian agent.” In India, protesters are accused of being “anti-national” and “making Pakistan happy” by protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Both are charged under the continued colonial tradition of punishing dissent by labelling it sedition.

Pakistan finally invalidated Article 124A in 2023, showing some progress towards breaking away from the colonial mindset, but this latest Raja Law might just be two steps back. 

Across the region in Bangladesh, laws like the 1872 Evidence Act have also been criticised for the loopholes they allow in cases of sexual violence, and pressures from critics led to some reforms in 2022 but many argue that vague definitions allow judges to apply their own biases. 

The 1923 Official Secrets Act is also still part of the law in all three countries. It was enacted by the British colonial government after the growth of the Indian independence movement, with the primary aim of preventing espionage and suppressing the unauthorized disclosure of government information. While all three countries have amended it in different ways, the common controversy lies in how broadly "secret" information can be defined and how the law is enforced. While India’s amendments change access slightly, in Bangladesh and Pakistan this still puts investigative journalism under pressure and limits journalists from working as freely as they should be. 

The impact of our colonial history isn’t just linked to these laws alone, but having them in place still allows that controlling mindset to seep deeper into our governing infrastructure, making free speech and access to justice less likely while these laws are still in place. The 2026 Punjab Bill only proves that our thinking hasn’t changed, we’ve just learnt a different language.