Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh was established on the north bank of the river Buriganga in 1610. Several water channels crossed through and around the city in the past and were of hydrographic importance linking the peripheral rivers mainly with Buriganga. The river Buriganga has been the lifeline of Dhaka city for over 500 years. Dhaka’s life and living depend largely on the health of buriganga for instant communication infrastructure, trading, drainage, water way, aquatic life, recreation and sources of fresh air. While Dhaka was developing and it is continued at a great pace, the river was totally ignored for the cause of rapid and unplanned urbanization, deteriorating waste dumping, riverside encroachment and improper management. Desperately short of urban amenities as well as the river is being turned into a narrow channel by land grabbers and illegal occupants, and the river itself has become polluted with industrial effluents, especially tannery waste and sewage. The river water becomes so polluted that even bacteria won’t survive. The results are millions of people are living with various health hazards, untreated toxic industrial wastes are polluting the environment and exhaust emissions of hydrocarbons (HC) and other organic compounds are implicating on health and aquatic life. The paper attempts to put forward the importance of the Buriganga River and to assess the root causes of deteriorating and its impact on Dhaka city as well as offer policy level suggestions as a guideline for sustainable management of the river Buriganga for the sustainability of Dhaka. This paper has been prepared based on primary and secondary sources. For primary sources interview and case study were used for data collection through random sampling and for secondary sources data were collected mainly by reviewing official publications both national and international, seminar and conference.