Crime Wave Alert - India

From the Financial Times (India), The number of crimes in Dhaka city appears to have shot up very menacingly over the last one month. This is not to say that the crime rate was significantly better before this period. The law and order conditions have been found sliding for over a year. But crimes of the type like trying to snatch the daughter away from parents or ones indicating the depths of depravity, were not so much noted before. What is very worrying is the spurt in such crimes in the city. Only last week, a couple lost their lives from trying to protect their youngestdaughter whom the attackers on the ground of not being allowed to marry her made an attempt to forcibly kidnap her. When the parents tried to resist this, they were fired upon and killed. Prior to this event, the deceased parents got phone calls and were called upon personally by the assassins who demanded that their daughter must be handed over to them.

The slain couple had tried their best to get the protection of the police but to no effect. Only days after this incident on Saturday, another couple and theirdaughter in the Kalabagan area came under attack with knives and received serious injuries. The attacker was a young man who was identified as an acquaintance of the daughter and who, allegedly, did this out of frustration for not getting some 2.0 million Taka he had demanded from the couple. The above are only some of the incidents that made headlines recently. Apart from these, a number of persons were killed or found dead in the city during the last seventy-two hours or so.

Drug peddling rackets and their members are mainly at the heart of such crimes. Youngsters and many of them in their teens are seen to be most reckless and uncaring members of these gangs. Their number has been increasing and police in many cases are alleged to be their patrons. Regular bribes received from them are guessed to be the main reason why police keep so quiet despite the unacceptable spread of these gangs and their increasingly brutal modus operandi.

The killers of the first couple are alleged to be well known members of drug rackets. They apparently had the confidence that police would do nothing to stop them from being so reckless in their murderous activities or their trying to intimidate the girl's parents before the murders. The relatives of the deceased made known this helplessness of the dead couple to the media subsequently. In most of the other cases of crimes now sweeping the city, the same kind of mentality is seen to be pervasive. Thus, citizens need not be blamed if they come to the conclusion that they have nobody to turn to or there are no dependable institutions of the state to meet the minimum needs of security of their lives and property.