Police trying to protect the Godfathers

By A Z M Abdul Ali ,Uttara, Dhaka
5 September 2004, 18:00 PM
The small innocuous news-item, "Police bar Litu's family from holding press conference" (The Daily Star, Thursday September 2, 2004) speaks volumes about the police's active support in suppressing the names of godfathers from coming out in public. The notorious listed criminal Litu's wife and younger brother called a press conference, apparently, to spell out the names of political and business godfathers who utilised Litu's services. Litu, like Pichhi Hannan, another listed criminal, died mysteriously while under arrest.

It doesn't require great detectives like Poirot or Byomkesh to put two and two together and find out who benefitted most from these mysterious deaths in custody and from gagging the mouth of these criminal's families. Besides, isn't it a fundamental right of a any citizen to be able to speak in public and to the press? I draw the attention of all human rights organisations and legal aid organisations, who are trying to see that rule of law is established in this country, to do something about such instances.

Our government and opposition political parties are very concerned about crimes and terrorism these days. Do they not know that nothing will be achieved unless the godfathers and beneficiaries, the Macavitys and the Napoleons of crime, are flushed out and taken to task?