Editorial
Case against 50 thousand!
Making a farce of law enforcement
Implicating as many as 50 thousand people in two separate cases for torching passenger launches on the Buriganga last Sunday has been both farcical and preposterous. While a big incident like this one should have impelled a full-fledged investigation, the FIR was done quite hastily and on a weak legal premise. Hence one may justifiably ask: How can anyone include so many unspecified people in an FIR, and then go about doing the investigation? More often than not, such wide casting of net opens floodgates for exacting vendetta and rent seeking.
Our experience shows that when a large number of people are found involved in a mass demonstration or agitation, law enforcers usually go for mass arrests, betraying little interest in law enforcement as such. In majority of such cases mass arrests are done with an ulterior motive, which is, extortion of money from the arrestees whether guilty or not. Hence, there cannot be any better explanation for filing cases against such a vast number of people in the Keraniganj incident on Sunday. Little wonder, as a result of the two cases, people in the area are living in an environment of intimidation, uncertainty and panic.
We strongly feel there is something amiss in the way law operates in this country, especially while dealing with fallout of any massive agitation. The knee jerk reaction is to go for indiscriminate hauling up of people as a show of some post-haste dynamism with innocents bearing the brunt of it all.
On this count, we feel there should be a clear directive from the higher courts of the country against such evident malpractice of indiscriminate and arbitrary arrests that are not legally tenable, far less morally acceptable. This pernicious practice is an outright mockery of law of the land and it severely negates the purpose of governance. We believe this also deals a blow to the credibility of the legal system.
While we demand a proper investigation of the Keraniganj incident, we at the same time want the law enforcers to apply caution so that no innocent person is subjected to persecution but the guilty persons are brought before the court of law.
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