Murder in Mirpur

These kinds of crimes were supposed to be things of the past. First we had Operation Cleanheart which was launched ostensibly to clear the streets of the criminals who had been patronised by the recently unseated AL government. Then came Rab. The tacit admission made by the government in forming Rab and apparently granting it plenary powers to execute alleged criminals without trial is that the police and judiciary were corrupted beyond repair and that this was the only way to restore law and order.

What we are now seeing is that apart from the moral hazards of such a policy, that it has not even been effective in making the public safer from criminals. It seems to us that since Rab came into being that the known criminals have gone into retreat and their places appear to have been taken by newer ones. One conclusion that can be drawn from this is that perhaps many of the real criminals are somehow managing to evade the Rab dragnet.

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However one looks at it, Friday's tragedy points to the hollowness of the government's crime fighting approach. The government has neither respected the rule of law nor made the public safe. The government's drive for law and order has been in both moral and practical terms a failure.

What is needed is serious reform of intelligence gathering and policing, and more importantly, the delinking of organised crime from organised politics. It is the culture of impunity which allows criminals to continue to terrorise the public and this culture of impunity stems from the political connections of the criminals or those who patronise them.

Until the government takes the hard steps to initiate serious reform in the law enforcement mechanism, then killings such as the shooting of Shahidullah in Mirpur will continue to haunt us no matter how many alleged criminals Rab executes without benefit of trial.