Editorial
When police turns mugger
What are we coming to?
There must be something seriously wrong with the system when those that we turn to for safety and help themselves resort to robbing and mugging. News reports, of two incidents in recent times regarding cops snatching money from the public, speak volumes of the degeneracy of the law enforcing agency.
In one incident a poultry trader was literally waylaid at Gabtoli in Bogra, by a posse of policemen who forced out all the money in his possession by threatening to implicate him in phensydyl peddling case if he did not do as he was told. A redeeming feature of the incident, however, is that the entire sum of money was returned to the victim when the offending policemen's bosses came to know of it. We wonder what action has been taken against these policemen.
In another incident in June in Sirajganj, a jeweler was literally hijacked from the bus he was traveling in and relieved of his possession of more than two hundred tola of gold and 10,000 taka in cash by a group of policemen.
These are serious matters that require both the police authorities and the government to go into. These keepers of the law had no respect for the uniform they were wearing. There must be reason for the moral decay of the law enforcers. Is it because they have also been infected by the general decay that has set in in our society? It has, perhaps, also to do with the regime of impunity that seems to be the order of the day in these forces. Or is that the policemen at the lower ranks have no other way to supplement their meager wages than resorting to mugging and extortion?
Whatever the reasons, these should be identified and quickly corrected.
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