It is reported that a Bangladesh Bank (the central bank of Bangladesh) official, Golam Rabbi was abducted by a team of police officers of Mohammadpur police station on Saturday 09 January, 2016. Rabbi has also been physically assaulted for refusing to give BDT 5 lac (500,000) and also received death threat from the officers. In less than a week after that, another incident of police brutality took place when a sub-inspector (SI) along with his subordinates beat up an officer of Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC), Bikash Chandra Das in the capital’s Jatrabari area on January 16, 2016. He was admitted to hospital in an unconscious state and was in ICU.

Comments:

Both the incidents sparked huge public outburst and widespread criticism against the actions of the Bangladeshi police. Such incidents are not something new for the people to live with; rather it came on the surface and caught media’s attention because the victims were government officials. While beating the DSCC officer, the officers at one stage strangled him and said, ‘Macher raja Ilish r desher raja police’ – Hilsha is the king of all fishes and police is the king of the whole country. And this repulsive statement exemplifies the very monster the police force has turned out to be or to put it another way, the government is deliberately making this force a thuggish one to instil fear into the society.

Harassment, torture, abduction, and killing by the government thugs are very common incidents in Bangladesh. These are not isolated incidents; rather it is the general scenario of the country. This tyrannical Hasina regime is attempting to make the country a police-state to secure her power and to make people’s life miserable by suffocating their voices. Beating of the government officials by other government apparatus is indicative of the miserable state in which the general people of Bangladesh are living at this moment. There are thousands of untold horrific stories of police maltreatment that goes unreported.

Since her ascension to power in 2009, western-puppet Hasina has been on a mission to make this country totally subservient to the wishes of her regional and colonial masters. In light of this objective, her very first move was to put a dagger in Bangladesh military’s heart through orchestrating the Pilkhana Massacre to weaken Bangladesh army and make the force subservient to India and USA. The source of fear for America and her regional ally – mushrik India – has always been the presence of strong Islamic sentiment in the Bangladesh Army which needed to be demolished anyhow. Hasina then started to use the police force cruelly to make the country a tyrannical state that will harshly extinguish any call of ideological Islam. So this is the mission of the West to cripple the sovereignty of the country from inside through its puppet Awami League regime. Hence such police brutalities are very much expected and also the government will nurture and protect this thuggish force for her heinous purpose. Unsurprisingly, the inspector general of police AKM Shahidul Hoque defended the criminal sub-inspector Masud, who assaulted the Bangladesh Bank Assistant Director Golam Rabbi by claiming that Rabbi committed a criminal offence by preventing police from frisking him. On top of that, Appellate division stayed High Court order to sue SI Masud for assaulting Rabbi.

The only way to get rid of the poisonous teeth and tentacles of this regime is not to be engrossed by the fear of Hasina’s evil law enforcing agencies. Rather people need to actively engage in discussion to make the society aware about the importance of Khilafah (Caliphate) and to challenge this artificially imposed democratic system which breeds rulers like Hasina.

Imadul Amin

Member of the Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Wilayah Bangladesh