Is it that we don't know or that we don't want to know?

Mr. Biswas is the vice president and a founder of Proshika, an NGO with over ten million beneficiaries and eight thousand employees, and is one of the many Proshika senior staff members now being prosecuted pursuant to allegations of misuse of the NGO's funds and improper involvement in political activity.

Mr. Biswas is a dignified man in his late fifties, married with two children, and with a fine reputation in the non-profit sector as a decent man and honest professional that spans several decades.

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In 1998, Mr. Biswas suffered a stroke which has left him wholly paralysed on his left side from the waist down, as a result of which he is unable to move or walk without assistance, and indeed needs assistance to perform even the most basic of tasks.

Mr. Biswas also suffers from hypertension and diabetes, for which he takes insulin shots twice a day, and has a heart condition. In plain English, Mr. Biswas is not a man in the best of health.

Pursuant to the government's case against Proshika senior staff, Mr. Biswas was arrested on May 22 and incarcerated in Dhaka Central Jail on the 23rd, where he remains to this day pending the outcome of his trial.

Due to his medical conditions, Mr. Biswas is being kept in the prison hospital. However, resources in the hospital unit appear to be in short supply, and he has been given no access to any kind of wheelchair or other equipment to help him move around, except to see his lawyers, and is dependent on the goodwill of other inmates to even move.

Despite his medical conditions, he has no access to regular medical treatment. He is receiving his twice-daily shots of insulin, but the insulin is kept at room temperature and not refrigerated as it needs to be, and he is unable to receive daily testing as is also necessary.

Worst of all is the fact that he until recently he did not have access to a commode to perform lavatory functions -- he only had use of the latrine facilities that other inmates must also use. I do not have to describe to you the unsanitary nature of these prison latrines, which must be unpleasant for anyone to use. However, for a disabled man, it is impossible to use such facilities in anything approaching a hygienic and safe manner.

The latrines are, of course, at ground level, and the ground, as you can imagine, is filthy. Imagine for a moment the indignity a disabled man must go through to have to use such a facility. Please recall that Mr. Biwas is paralysed on one-side from the waist down. He cannot squat -- he must lie himself down in the filth that covers the ground.

Repeated pleas for access to a commode, or indeed to allow a commode to be brought into the prison for his use, were finally granted last week, after he had been forced to use the prison latrines for the first ten days of his incarceration. Think about that for a moment. Ten days.

The obvious question that arises with respect to Mr. Biswas's incarceration, is why a man in his condition has not been granted bail. It is clearly stated in the penal code that bail may by granted in all cases other than capital offences and those punishable by life imprisonment. Mr. Biswas is therefore bailable at the discretion of the court.

As a disabled man, with a family, reputation, and long-standing ties in the community, Mr. Biswas is no flight risk. Dhaka Central Jail clearly cannot provide for his medical care, and even seems to have had a hard time providing him with the bare minimum of acceptable facilities.

One cannot help suspect that Mr. Biswas is being denied bail in order to harass or punish him. But for what?

Some members of the government appear to have targeted Proshika from their first days in office. They have reportedly sworn to get even with Proshika for the NGO's alleged political mobilisation against the four-party alliance during the 2001 elections.

An audit has been prepared, alleging all kinds of financial chicanery, and many senior staff members have been charged, among other things, with misusing funds and improperly using Proshika for political purposes. In fairness, it should be noted that the international donors who have given the funds that Proshika has been accused of misappropriating have repeatedly stated that their audits show no irregularities.

I have not studied the evidence or heard the defense in these cases, and I proffer no opinion as to the merit of the charges. That can be settled, and is being settled, in a court of law, where the government will have to the opportunity to present its case in full, and the accused will have the opportunity to defend themselves in full.

Please bear in mind, though, that until and unless those charged are found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, that Mr. Biswas and the rest of the accused must be considered innocent. In the same way that I do not wish to comment on the merits of the case at this premature stage, people should not assume the accused are guilty just because they have been charged.

In the meantime, however, there is a severe problem with the actions taken by the government against Proshika.

It has been reported that many Proshika offices around the country have been raided and ransacked by the police and ruling party supporters. Assets and documents have reportedly been seized, looted, confiscated, and destroyed, and Proshika staff have been physically abused and arrested en masse.

At least one Proshika staff member has made credible allegations of torture and abuse in custody.

There can be no justification for this kind of official harassment and abuse. There can be no justification for the looting and ransacking of Proshika offices or the beating up of Proshika staff members or the vindictive denial of bail or custodial torture.

It has been reported that Kazi Faruque Ahmed, the president of Proshika and the primary target of the government's ire, almost ended up in a joint interrogation cell so that he could be taught "a lesson" in the words of a senior government official. Thankfully, he was spared that ordeal, though it should be noted that he wouldn't have been the first prominent critic of this government to have been tortured in custody.

This kind of official misconduct should concern us all. Can we not all agree on some basic minimum level of conduct? Can we not have a national consensus on same basic minimum level of acceptable treatment?

Can we not all agree that that people should not be tortured in police custody, that disabled men shouldn't be denied bail and then forced to wallow in excrement to perform their natural bodily functions? Is that too much to ask for?

This issue is not about the rights and the wrongs of the cases against Proshika staff. If they are found to be culpable in a court of law then they should be punished according to the law of the land. But the kind of harassment and abuse that Proshika staff have been made to suffer and the refusal of bail to Mr. Biswas, before their cases have even been adjudicated, is something that should appall everyone. This kind of indifference on the part of our elected and appointed representatives to the very fundamentals of decency and dignity shames us all.

How is it that we can be so silent about this horrific state of affairs? What does it say about us as a people that we are evidently willing to turn a blind eye to these kinds of abuses that are becoming all too common?

This is my country and I am proud of it. I refuse to believe that people simply don't care about what is happening to Proshika employees or believe that such abuse is warranted. But what other conclusion is there to be drawn from the lack of public outcry?

People might argue in their defense that they didn't know how Mr. Biswas and the other Proshika staff members were being treated.

Well, now you do.

Zafar Sobhan is an Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.