Editorial
Lethal Narsingdi shootout
Leaves many unanswered questions
The special anti-crime force Rapid Action Battalion (Rab)'s statement that six muggers were killed in a shootout in Narsingdi on Monday has raised some serious questions.
Challenging Rab's version, the victims' relatives maintained that none of the victims were muggers.
Whatever the truth, the very method of Rab's dealing with the alleged muggers is simply unacceptable, because it goes against the norms of civilised law and harks back to the days when the law of the jungle prevailed. Even allowing for the fact that the victims were all muggers, why were they killed at all? Under what legal authority persons suspected of mugging on a tip-off from an unidentified businessman such murderous assault could be perpetrated in broad daylight by people claiming to be law-enforcers.?
Law provides that no one can be termed a criminal, let alone shot at and killed, until and unless their guilt is proven in the court of law.
Most of all, there is a standard drill for dealing with such an eventuality. Whatever could be gathered from the Rab's version indicates that the muggers were fleeing in a microbus with the snatched money when the Rab men gave them the chase.
In the first place, did the Rab give them a warning to stop and surrender? Failing which, Rab should have immobilised their transport by shooting to puncture the tyres. None of these steps were taken. Instead, the Rab personnel opened fire claiming that they did so in self-defence. Seeing the recovered cache of arms, it appears that the alleged muggers' fire power couldn't have matched that of the Rab. Actually, such issues would not have arisen at all, had the Rab handled the incident according to standard practice.
What has happened is, therefore, repugnant to all legal norms and human rights sensibilities.
We demand of the government to constitute a probe committee that must include ballistic and forensic experts to carry out a scooping investigation into the entire gamut of the incident to get to the truth and inform the public accordingly.
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