David Deolall Bhagwan, 52, spent approximately 26 years in law enforcement, serving first with the Royal Anguilla Police Force and then the Bermuda Police Service (BPS). His career took him through the ranks to inspector, but court records and reporting now document a complicated professional history that extends beyond his recent criminal case. The available evidence includes judicial decisions, contemporaneous news reports and documents whose authenticity remains disputed. Together, they provide a picture of a senior officer whose career has become the subject of legal and disciplinary scrutiny, while leaving important questions for the courts to resolve.
The most serious current allegations became public in July 2026, when Bhagwan appeared before Magistrates’ Court in Bermuda facing four indictable charges. According to The Royal Gazette, prosecutors alleged that he obtained a 2025 Kia Picanto between an unspecified date and June 8, 2026, intending to permanently deprive a man of the vehicle. Two further counts concerned allegedly making and using a false instrument to induce the Transport Control Department (TCD) to accept it as genuine. The reports said those document-related offences allegedly involved an intention to cause prejudice to another person. A fourth charge alleged that Bhagwan financially exploited an older person between an unspecified date and July 10, 2026.
The publicly available reports do not establish the vehicle’s value, the amount of any alleged financial loss, or whether the alleged victim suffered a quantified financial injury. They also do not establish that Bhagwan admitted wrongdoing. At his July court appearance, he was not required to enter a plea because the case was expected to proceed in the Supreme Court. Magistrate Craig Attridge granted conditional bail of $30,000 and ordered him to surrender his travel documents. Bail is a measure governing release pending proceedings, not a finding of guilt.
The criminal case was not the only pressure facing Bhagwan that summer. On August 10, 2026, he received notice of a special disciplinary hearing under Bermuda’s Police (Conduct) Orders 2016, according to a subsequent Supreme Court ruling. The court did not examine the substance of the underlying misconduct allegations in that ruling, so they should not be presented as established facts. The timing, however, became central to a separate dispute over whether Bhagwan could leave the force before disciplinary proceedings were completed.
On August 11, the day after receiving the disciplinary notice, Bhagwan sent the Commissioner of Police a notice of retirement. He argued that his age and more than 25 years of service entitled him to retire, identifying August 14 as his intended last day. The Commissioner refused to accept the notice, relying on the requirement for consent under the Police (Conditions of Service) Orders 2024 and the pending disciplinary action. Bhagwan then sought judicial review and interim relief to stop the disciplinary process while the retirement dispute was litigated.
The Supreme Court’s August 26 ruling, David Deolall Bhagwan v Commissioner of Police, [2026] SC (Bda) 93 Civ, refused the requested interim injunction. Justice Andrew Martin recognised that a serious legal question remained over how the statutory retirement provisions interacted with the rules governing police resignation and discipline. But the court concluded that the balance of justice did not justify stopping the hearing. It was particularly concerned that Bhagwan would not undertake not to rely on the passage of time to argue that his retirement had become effective while the case was pending. The judge also considered whether granting an injunction would improperly obstruct disciplinary proceedings that had begun while Bhagwan was still serving. The ruling did not finally determine every issue in the retirement judicial review; it decided the immediate request to halt the hearing.
The disciplinary process then reached a decisive point. On August 26, Commissioner of Police Darrin Simons confirmed that Inspector 2042 David Bhagwan had been dismissed following a special case hearing. The announcement was reported by Bermuda Broadcasting and The Royal Gazette. Simons declined to comment further because criminal prosecution was ongoing. The dismissal was an employment and disciplinary outcome, separate from any eventual verdict on the four criminal charges. It should not be described as proof that the criminal allegations were true.
Bhagwan’s earlier career also included a lengthy dispute over promotion. In 2018, he took part in the Bermuda Police Service’s process for promotion from sergeant to inspector and was unsuccessful. In February 2019, he sought judicial review, alleging that the promotion process had been unlawful and biased. His case named then-Commissioner Stephen Corbishley and members of the interview panel, including Martin Weekes, Antoine Daniels, Michael Trott and John Payne. The allegations were challenges to the fairness of the process, not findings that those officials had committed misconduct.
The Supreme Court dismissed the promotion challenge in April 2021, and the Court of Appeal dismissed Bhagwan’s appeal in June 2022. The appellate court found that the promotion policy and process had been lawfully applied and that the exclusion of assessors from specialised assessments, where applied consistently, was procedurally fair. In December 2022, the Court of Appeal also ruled on costs, leaving Bhagwan responsible for the legal costs of the unsuccessful appeal. There was an important qualification to the story: he was subsequently promoted to inspector in the summer of 2022, despite losing the court challenge to the earlier promotion decision.
A separate document supplied for this investigation warrants caution. It is an eight-page application bearing the title In the Supreme Court of Bermuda, referring to a 2017 dispute over the Bermuda Police Association’s sergeants’ branch-board election. The document identifies Bhagwan as applicant and names Andrew Harewood, Albert Williams, Wolde Maxwell, Ronald Taylor and Michael Butcher as respondents. It alleges irregularities in the election process, including a dispute over a tie-breaking draw and objections to the decision to recognise Bhagwan as a representative. These are assertions contained in the document, not independent findings of a court.
The accompanying one-page email, dated September 11, 2019 and addressed to OffshoreAlert, purports to be from David Bhagwan. It states that he had been alerted to a judicial-review application allegedly signed by him, says he never filed it, calls the matter “data and identify theft,” and threatens legal action unless the information is removed within 48 hours.
The two documents therefore tell conflicting stories: one presents a legal application in Bhagwan’s name, while the other disputes its authenticity. The material supplied does not include a verified court register entry, a final ruling on that specific 2017 matter, a forensic signature assessment or an independently authenticated copy of the original filing. It would be irresponsible to conclude from these documents alone either that Bhagwan filed the application or that someone stole his identity. The discrepancy merits verification with the Supreme Court Registry and the publisher that reportedly hosted the material.
As of October 23, 2026, the latest credible public reports located for this article establish the four charges, the August dismissal and the unsuccessful bid to stop disciplinary proceedings. The July report anticipated a further court appearance on September 8, but the sources located for this review did not establish the outcome of that appearance or a later verdict. No conviction, guilty plea, settlement or quantified recovery in the criminal case could be verified. Those gaps matter: an ongoing prosecution must not be mistaken for a concluded case.
The broader lesson is about accountability and due process in institutions that exercise public power. Police officers are entrusted with legal authority and public confidence; disciplinary systems must be able to address serious allegations without being improperly obstructed, while criminal courts must decide guilt on evidence rather than headlines. Bhagwan’s dismissal is established, and the courts have rejected some of his earlier legal challenges. The criminal allegations, however, still require proof. A credible account must preserve both sides of that distinction: public officials should face scrutiny when serious allegations arise, and the presumption of innocence must remain intact until the criminal process reaches its conclusion.
Source:
OffshoreAlert
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