On April 22, President Emomali Rahmon introduced staff changes to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Major-General Bakhtiyor Nazarzoda was appointed to head the Interior Ministry Main Criminal Investigation Directorate (CID), replacing Tohir Barotzoda, who was appointed as Head of the Interior Ministry Directorate for Prevention of Juvenile and Youth Crime.
Prior to this, the 54-year-old Nazarzoda had served as Head of the Interior Ministry Directorate to Combat Drug Trafficking since 2019.
According to his biography published on the Interior Ministry's website, he has been working in police since 1998 and has experience in criminal investigation work. He has a higher legal education and graduated from the Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tajikistan.
Bakhtiyor Nazarzoda began his service as an operational officer in the department for the fight against economic crimes in the Sino-1 police station in Dushanbe. Over the years, he worked as an investigator in the forensic-criminalistics department of the Sino-1 police station, as an operational officer in the criminal investigation department of the Interior Ministry’s Office in Dushanbe, and as the head of the 6th Unit of the Criminal Investigation Department at the Interior Ministry’s Office in Dushanbe.
He also served as the head of the police station in Dushanbe’s Ismoili Somoni district, deputy head of the Kulob police department. After that, he returned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs apparatus and served as the senior operative for investigating particularly important cases in the Interior Ministry Criminal Investigation Directorate.
Subsequently, in the Interior Ministry’s Office in Khatlon province, he took the position of head of the department for the fight against illegal drug trafficking, and after some time, he returned to the position of head of the criminal investigation department at the Interior Ministry’s Office in Dushanbe. Additionally, Nazarzoda was briefly the head of the 1st police station in the northern city of Isfara.
In October 2019, he was appointed to head the Interior Ministry Directorate to Combat Drug Trafficking.
Nazarzoda has been awarded several departmental and state awards.
The Criminal Investigation Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is one of the key units in the Ministry’s structure. In previous years, the activities of this directorate were not publicly visible, but after the appointment of Shohrukh Saidzoda, who had headed the directorate for seven years and is reportedly a close friend of Dushanbe Mayor, Rustam Emomali, its work became more frequently covered in the media and social networks. Currently, Shohrukh Saidzoda heads the Interior Ministry’s Office in Dushanbe.
