Why harassing people with cases after ‘peaceful’ polls?

Tara Mia
Tara Mia

The ministers, advisers, and leaders and MPs (members of parliament) of the ruling party have been stressing that the 30 December election was a ‘peaceful’ one. They came up with the number of casualties during the previous elections to justify this and the election commission is happy, too. They neither bothered about the allegations of vote rigging made by the opposition parties nor did they care about the media’s criticism. How does this claim of peaceful election go with the 4,000 sabotage cases along with the 88,000 named and 300,000 unnamed people? It only means most of these cases are concocted. Filing cases over incidents that never happened is not just a violation of the law but of human rights, too.

In a Prothom Alo report titled ‘Another Bangladesh before the High Court’ published on 29 January, the suffering of hundreds of bail seekers were portrayed. The Daily Star earlier published a photo of the physically challenged Tara Mia who was among the defendants. Most of the persons reported were from the working class.

The police officials came up with hilarious excuses regarding these cases. They claimed the local BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party) leaders carried out the attacks with these people.

The topic of these cases is almost the same. The BNP men were rigging the ballots while the law enforcers tried to stop them and in retaliation, the BNP men attacked them. Schemes along attacks and sabotages were stated in several cases. Many of the victims said they lost their last penny when forced to come to Dhaka for a bail. The district judge could have granted them anticipatory bail, so they need not spend time and money seeking bail at the higher courts in Dhaka.

Though the government’s actual benefit is hardly recognisable from these cases, the advantages taken by certain police members are easily recognisable.

Those who are capable can manage to get exempted from the case by bribing the police, but it is impossible for people like Tara Mia or Goainghat’s quarry worker Tajimul Islam.

New the government has been formed and the prime minister in her speech to the nation has urged people to work together. In these circumstances, harassing the opposition members through fictitious cases is undesirable.

Withdraw all the fictitious cases. The higher court can interfere if the government department concerned does not act. The innocent people must be protected at any cost.