Rein in these law breakers

The bullet-riddled bodies of the three victims of "mob-beating" send a chill down our spine. We start worrying how safe we are, whether we should trust our police force any more.

The benign story of a mob catching four petrol bomb throwers in action and beating three of them to death takes a sinister edge when their bodies are found to carry bullet holes -- 57 in total. More worried we become when we recall how police tried to pass on this brutal murder, apparently pre-meditated as nobody would carry so many guns and bullets without any certain plan, as a simple case of mob justice.

Or should we believe that police are so incompetent that they cannot differentiate between bullet injuries with empty shells lying around with raw beating of the people? And if these boys, in their teens, were not shot by any law enforcement agency as no one has claimed so then should we also believe that the people in general are carrying arms so freely?  A random mob carries arms?

In the last few days the situation has turned so brutal that the so-called crossfire and shootout incidents are happening every day. It seems the state is no more interested to take the course of the law to try and convict a criminal; it deems it much easier and convenient to just label somebody as a criminal and send them to death.

It is clear that what we had seen in Latin America in the 1960s and 70s is being replicated in Bangladesh today. In Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Peru, the military dictators of that time had gone on a mission to form death squads and kill communists, priests and political opponents.

And now the law enforcement agencies have become involved in the activities similar to those by the death squads in Latin America. Things have become so scary that even relatives don't dare to claim bodies.

In the process, everybody's life has become insecure. Police can catch anybody and kill with impunity because how can you blame them if your "cohorts" attack the force while on arms-finding mission at the dead of night?

If this is to continue, the law enforcing agencies will become reckless and then who will blame them if more Narayanganj seven-murder-like things happen?

Such law enforcers do more harm to the enforcement of law than usual law breakers ever can.