Editorial
Peelkhana massacre verdict
Justice done to the victims
PUNISHMENT has finally been handed down to the perpetrators of the February 2009 BDR massacre. We are happy that justice has finally been done.
Though the loss and trauma that the families of the victims have sustained cannot be entirely redressed through awarding of punishment to the offenders, the verdict will at least give some solace to their deeply aggrieved hearts.
While expressing our approbation for the court sentence awarded to the offenders during the mutiny, we would like to stress that retribution is not the sole purpose of justice. It is only meant to set an example so as to deter others from committing similar crimes in the future.
While we hope that with this verdict a dark episode in the nation's history will come to a close we must take lessons from the tragedy and learn from the mistakes. Particularly, we must be more careful in the future before employing paramilitary forces in such jobs that don't conform to the type of duties they are accustomed to doing.
A note of caution here. There is no room for complacency that the verdict has given decent burial to the Peelkhana incident once and for all. There is compelling reason to find out why the tragedy did at all take place. What motivated the mutineers to take up arms against their own officers? It is up to the government to go deeper into these issues, find out the causative factors of tragedy and take steps to avoid their repetition in the future.
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