On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 7:38 AM, Isha Khan <bdmailer@gmail.com> wrote:
Editorial
IGP's law and order claim beggars beliefTHE characterisation of law and order across the country as 'satisfactory' by the inspector general of police, Hasan Mahmud Khandaker, on Sunday defies reality and beggars belief, and could very well induce helpless rage in most people, especially those who have to contend with crimes, petty and serious, almost every day. Incidentally, the same day that the police chief termed Friday's killing of upazila chairman and Bangladesh Nationalist Party leader Sanaullah Nur in an attack reportedly by activists of the Bangladesh Chhatra League and the Juba League, student and youth fronts respectively of the ruling Awami League, a 'stray incident', the Rangpur Medical College was closed over a clash between two BCL factions and seven students were hurt at Rajshahi University in a BCL attack on a rally of the Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal, student front of the BNP. Certainly, the excesses and atrocities perpetrated by the Chhatra League and the Juba League across the country—be it over tender manipulation or admission business or rent-seeking or whatever crime that one knows of—represent anything but 'stray incidents'.
Moreover, his observation contradicts the police records of crime in the first six months of the current calendar year that the home minister, Sahara Khatun, presented during her question hour in parliament on September 27. According to a report published in New Age on September 28, she said the police recorded 7,285 crimes against women alone, followed by 4,133 thefts, 1,951 killings, 1,586 rapes, 754 incidents of child repression, 496 robberies and 402 abductions. Even if we strictly go by these figures—needless to say, many more crimes go unreported—we are talking about almost 17,000 incidents of crime in six months, or nearly 3,000 per month, or some 100 per day. If the inspector general of police calls law and order 'satisfactory' despite such a high crime rate, we wonder what would constitute 'unsatisfactory', let alone absence of law and order, in his opinion.
The decidedly absurd claim by the police chief tends to indicate that he may be following the script penned by his political boss, i.e. the home minister, to the letter. Here, it is pertinent to recall that Sahara Khatun claimed on February 10 that 'law enforcement agencies have now been able to keep law and order under control compared to any time in the past'; incidentally, six people, including a ward commissioner, were murdered in the capital Dhaka alone in the preceding 48 hours. It is also the home minister who infamously claimed that no extrajudicial killings had taken place since the AL-led government assumed office in January 2009.
The inspector general of police may have failed to realise that such denial or delusion—however one may put it—hardly assures the people; for, the general perception is that law and order has actually deteriorated, quite drastically, in the past 21 months or so of the AL-led government's tenure. On the contrary, it may only cause further erosion of the public faith in the police, with the people suspecting that the law enforcers are more eager to toe the government's line than to ensure their safety and security.
Hence, the police chief would do better to refrain from making such absurd claims and instead focus on combating crime. He needs to realise that denial will not make crimes go away, decisive actions will.
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