THE death of two passengers and injury to another after they had allegedly been tossed by muggers out of a commuter train at two locations in Mymensingh on Saturday … may well be yet another pointer to the sustained downslide in law and order across the country since the Awami League-led government assumed office in 2009. As … reported … the incidents took place at around 10:30pm when the victims … put up resistance against the miscreants who started to mug passengers after the Jamalpur-bound train had passed the Gaffargaon station. Suffice it to say, mugging on passenger trains and muggers’ pushing passengers off moving trains [has] become a regular phenomenon…. Regrettably … the authorities … have … turned a blind eye to this problem….

In fact, the government appears to have remained indifferent to the overall safety and security of the people … in the past four years or so. Worse still, the key functionaries of the government and the police administration have continued to deny the ground realities regarding law and order…. Not only that, reports have it that even some members of law-enforcement agencies have engaged in various sorts of crime….

The government needs to realise that while the citizens are being cornered into a state of perpetual fear, with absolutely no security anywhere … and the law-enforcers are continuously failing to deliver … the [citizens] are becoming more at ease with taking the law into their own hands. All this is sure to cause society to plunge into utter lawlessness…. — (Jan 1)