Editorial
Degrading treatment of DU student
Time to discipline law enforcers
We welcome the swift move taken by the High Court on the police maltreatment of Dhaka University student Abdul Kadar last week. It has ordered investigation by a committee and directed the IG Police to place the two concerned police officials under suspension during investigation.
The horrendous manner in which the police have conducted themselves through arresting Kadar on questionable charges of carjacking and then subjecting him to inhuman and degrading treatment in custody reflects badly on their professionalism. We are reminded of Limon Hossain, whose leg needed to be amputated -- thanks to a trigger-happy RAB officer.
Events centring around Kadar are indicative of what the public have always known, that all too often it is the innocent and the unsuspecting who come under the wrath of the law enforcers. In Kadar's case, his teachers and others have testified to his record. He has himself informed the court how a police officer inflicted a bad wound on his leg with a cleaver to prove that he had been beaten by an angry mob. As a report in this newspaper the other day makes it clear, there is nothing to indicate that there was a robbery in the area from where Kadar was picked up and hence the question of a mob pouncing on the student is nothing but a cooked-up story. The learned judges of the High Court made this same point when they told the Khilgaon thana OC that he was lying.
Those whose duty it is to enforce law and protect the weak and vulnerable are themselves acting criminally, torturing innocent people and making up cock-and-bull story to defend their criminality. Whenever exposed by the relatives of the victims, other members of community and, above all, the media the police swiftly brand the tortured as robbers or having criminal antecedents. What is more dangerous, police show a clannish mentality of rallying round a cause of self-defence thereby shielding the guilty. When the custodian becomes the torturer, where do the people turn to for security?
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