|
DISILLUSIONMENT, indignation and outrage among people due to the insensitivity of the police to their needs have reached very serious proportions, to say the least. People's mood are becoming 'incendiary' -- this would be a better description and symbolic perhaps of people's hatred for the police. Last week, a group of dacoits numbering some 50 or 60 looted a shop at Companyganj near Dhaka. The shop was in the business of selling ornaments made from gold. The dacoits came in the late hours of the night and looted the shop for over an hour and a half. The owner communicated about the arrival of the dacoits to the nearby police station. But the police help never came and the dacoits were able to get away comfortably with valuables from the shop valued some Taka 2.5 to Taka 3.0 million. When the police finally come to the scene, the dacoits had departed long ago.
The owner of the shop as well as the local people were infuriated by the immobility and lack of action on the part of the local police. They were convinced that the police's late arrival was the outcome of a collusion between the police and the dacoits. The police, they think, would later receive a share of the spoils from the dacoity. The mob, thus, surrounded the local police station the following day and hurled brickbats at it. In the ensuing police-people fight, the so-called law enforces felt pressurised enough to shoot at the people in which five died and fifty were injured.
This was not the first such symptom of anarchy in Bangladesh centering on police's lack of action or deliberate non-action. Police typically do not come to the aid of people who become the victims of crimes or come after the committing of crimes so that the criminals are facilitated. Everywhere, people in the country are becoming too disgruntled with police's such role and the Companyganj fiasco was only an expression or explosion of people's embittered move as a result of the same. More such explosions by the people can be expected in the future to create widespread anarchic conditions in the country. But it is also not possible, in all fairness, to blame the people for the lawlessness.
The challenge to law and order needs no explanation when policemen themselves turn kidnappers for ransom or they start snatching money. But many such incidents and worst ones, all signifying police's utter lack of morality, have been reported in the press without a pause in recent years. Added to their role in facilitating crimes and criminals , the same have put into sharp focus the very degenerated state of the police force and, thus, the very pressing need to put this vital force through a reform process, starting immediately. The realisation today is shared by almost all in Bangladesh that the police in their present state are too decadent a force. The good acts of the police, in the public conception, are far outweighed by their unscrupulous actions or lack of actions.
Sometime ago, a research organisation carried out a survey on the police and persons interviewed in it were invited to comment on the reliability of the police force. An overwhelming 75 per cent replied in the negative to the effect that they had no confidence in the integrity or the efficiency of the police. The survey was conducted on a national basis and based on careful countrywide sampling. Therefore, its finding was indeed shocking but came as no surprise because indications were received several times in the past through various assessment of public opinion that the image of the police had eroded to a great extent .
There are members of the police force in Bangladesh who are no doubt true to their profession. But they are a few probably in the hierarchies of the police force. A disturbingly large number of them are found lacking in morals and professional ethics and are transparently guided by pecuniary instincts, instead of professional values. Political sheltering of criminals is cited as one reason for police's inability to move against known criminals. But in the last analysis these are probably excuses in most cases to cover up for the extensive immorality in the ranks of the police force.
A general disdain is noted among people in reporting crime incidents at police stations. This is because they feel that such reporting is futile since police would not make the GD entry of a case without bribe or would investigate such a case only on payment of 'speed money' which is another name for bribes. In other cases, police are sensed as having such close relations with the criminals that the victims or potential victims of these criminals think that police would take no step and, therefore, it is useless to seek police's help.
The police allegedly have regular arrangements with various extortionists. The extortionists collect regularly huge sums of money from shop owners, traders, industrial operators, vendors, etc., and they can engage in such activities because a substantial part of the extorted money go the police. Recently, some actions were noted to catch policemen who were found involved in extortion activities. But the same must become a regular activity and sustained to produce the desired result. The raising of a special group of police to detect and take actions against corrupt policemen was once contemplated. But the move appears to have died down. Clearly, such a group must be made fully operational throughout the country at the earliest and it must be so raised that its members can be relied on to be fully scrupulous and devoted to their duties.
The improvement of the law and order is high on the agenda of the government. But it is doubtful that it will be able to attain this target in the long run by relying on such a degraded police force. It must necessarily seek reformatory activities within the police as a precondition for continuing success in the law and order improvement drive.
|