A naval officer was openly attacked by the government thugs in the capital city. In reality, criminal activities of the known ruling party thugs have turned into unstoppable reckless crimes on the rise across Bangladesh. The crime world is under their control. These thugs are terrorists to bully the people and grab their property. They operate in every locality. They have weapons, handcuffs and torture centres. To bring everybody under law does not include the government’s own thugs.
Those who believe in running the government by corrupting everybody in the government, to them laws are not important. For abusing power the government talks of law and punishment as a bluff.
The thugs are getting bolder and bolder in breaking laws, raping women, doing heinous crimes, grabbing property and running torture centres but our larger than large state machinery is proving powerless for reasons known but cannot be said. Their weakness is self-made. If RAB and other law enforcing agencies so want, all these known young criminals can be rounded up within weeks. As reported, last Monday, Lt Wasif a naval officer filed a case with Dhanmondi Police Station naming four accused, including Erfan Selim, who together assaulted with no consideration that he is a serving naval officer. Lt Wasif was beaten up so ruthlessly that he lost one tooth.
Media reports in national dailies on Tuesday said that in the latest incident, a team of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) conducted a drive at the house of Erfan Selim, son of Dhaka-7 lawmaker Haji Selim, at Old Dhaka in the afternoon on charge of attacking Lt Wasif Ahmed Khan of Bangladesh Navy in Dhanmondi area on Sunday night and arrested Efran, a councilor of Ward 30 of Dhaka South City Corporation.
It is the usual picture that after these thugs are caught publicly the RAB, police and every other body exist for protecting the people against the gangs of criminal thugs become suddenly all active. Even a mobile court was available to punish them.
The question most pertinent to ask is why the huge administrative machinery cannot stop them. The activities of these gangs are known to everybody but nothing is done to restrain them. They defy police, they defy law. Our public servants forget that their honour as public servants is at stake. They cannot be so incompetent that they cannot treat criminals as criminals.
The good people are sleeping while the politically protected thugs are causing horror and havoc to the general public. Many of them hold elected posts without being elected.
The sad incident that happened to the naval officer has demonstrated how bold and how far these politically protected thugs have gone. If change comes, these “brave thugs” will have no police to hide. But why the public servants will go on neglecting their responsibility to the people and not behave like public servants — that is the question that has to be answered.
