At this latter point control of the East India Company's Bengal Presidency passed to the British Government.

The first locally recruited unit of the East India Company's forces in Bengal, raised in 1757 and present at the Battle of Plassey, was known as the Galliez Battalion (named after one of its first Captains) and called the Lal Pultan (Red Battalion) by its locally recruited members.

In 1764 however, the Bengal Native Infantry regiments were renumbered in the order of the individual seniority of their commanding officers.

It was raised at Oudh by Captain T Naylor in 1776 The Bengal army mostly recruited upper-caste elements like Kanyakubja Brahmins, Rajputs, from Awadh.

Those that mutinied engaged in armed conflict with their officers, other East India Company forces or British Army units.

[14] Mutinying regiments officially ceased to exist and their place in the Order of precedence of the Bengal Army was taken by another unit.

For example, the 33rd and 35th regiments of Bengal Native Infantry were disarmed at Phillour on the morning of 25 June 1857 by the 52nd (Oxfordshire) Regiment of Foot (around 800 men) under the command of Brigadier General John Nicholson with the support of the 17th Light Field Battery, Bengal Horse Artillery (12 guns).

When the 35th BNI arrived at the camping ground they found themselves surrounded on three sides by the 52nd Regiment of Foot and covered by the guns of the artillery.

Brigadier General Nicholson then informed Colonel Younghusband, the commanding officer, that his men "must give up their arms!"

Following the completion of a widespread reform of the army in what was now the British Raj, the Bengal Native Infantry was reduced in size and renumbered in 1861.