Chittagong, the killing field

Rest House popularly known as Hatir Banglo, on railway hill near Lalkhan Bazar crossing is now being used as a officer quarters. Bangladesh Railway constructed the rest house in the shape of an elephant. Photo: Zobaer Hossain Sikder

As of today (August 14), police could not trace him out, though they told newsmen that he would be rescued by today or tomorrow. Family members of Jamaluddin have already paid Tk 50 lakh to the abductors as ransom for his release, a source said

As Jamaluddin is not yet freed, Chittagonians are skeptic about his fate, particularly, after the murder of another businessman, Rezaur Rahman Zakir. Zakir was just finished by the terrorist killers in less than 20 hours after he was picked up from Chittagong Railway Station in the morning of August 11.

In the recent time, despite a complacent view of some cabinet ministers, crimes have not only trebled but have also taken on newer forms of execution, the most dangerous one of which is engaging professional killers to get the job done. Big money flows in to conspire about plan and organise the crime. So, when killing becomes a high-paid job and the noose of law is relatively loose, then more astray young people will be lured by this profession. And as their numbers will increase and become available, more rival businessmen will plot to kill one another, more friends will try to kill more friends.

Crime has a dangerously fascinating side to it. It takes on an epidemic form when it becomes easily doable. Every dispute big or small then seems to be easily solvable by an act of killing the rivals pumping bullets into each other's head.

This is the most worrying thing for the citizens that murder looks to be an easier proposition. The terrifying realisation is that Jamaluddin's abduction or Zakir's killing is not a crime in isolation but a projection of the vicious network.It is regularly being funnelled with illegal money and weapons from people of influence, and against which law, education, good sense, morality, and finally conscience, fail to assert themselves, is what tormenting our souls.

Crime, however, is never a cause, but a result. Every crime is both consequent upon a previous crime and consequential. Both Jamaluddin and Zakir are victims of a badly run economic culture in which trading consisting of shady dealings, transaction of contraband items, aggrandizement of land and property illegally, and bribing, and evading taxes, and under-voicing and over-voicing, and twisting law have become order of the day.

A decadent culture is identifiable when things immoral are justified, black money is recognised as symbol of social prestige, and failure of police is acknowledged to be an inevitability. And, good souls also begin to suffer from the delusion that everything that this society presently is cannot but what it is.

Law enforcing agencies in Chittagong are also receiving much flak about their role in Jamaluddin's case. We only wish that all of it were not true.