Combating growing incidents of mugging

After a relative lull, the muggers are back on the streets of the capital city with full vengeance. This time they are found to be more brutal than before as they are killing people in their bids to snatch money and other valuables from pedestrians and rickshaw passengers in particular. During the last couple of months, at least four people, including a six-month old baby and a woman, lost their lives in the hands of daredevil muggers in Dhaka. The criminals do no more keep their operations confined to late night, dusk or dawn time and swoop on their victims anytime they want. The muggers now snatch in board daylight and even in crowded places.

The death of a baby girl at city's Dayaganj in a mugging incident some weeks back had come as a rude shock to most people; they had expected that the law enforcers would take steps to stop recurrence of similar incident. But the expectation has remained largely unmet as incidents of mugging have been on the rise with muggers becoming extremely violent in some cases. In the final week of last month, a woman was dragged nearly half a kilometre and later run over by a car belonging to the muggers in the early morning. Last week, an employee of an agent of Bkash, a leading mobile financial service provider, was knifed to death at Uttara in broad daylight by muggers who snatched a sizeable amount of cash from him. A private car was used in their operation.

That the incidents of mugging have been on the rise in recent months is also corroborated by the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) statistics which are compiled very conservatively. The number of incidents of mugging, according to the DMP records, was five times more in 2017 than that of the previous year. It is, however, universally known that official data do not represent the actual situation concerning criminal acts, including mugging, taking place in a locality. Police with a view to showing their 'improved' performance are found unwilling to record cases involving theft, robberies, mugging, etc. The victims, too, out of their bitter experience with police, stay away from reporting incidents of mugging to the police stations concerned.

The death of people in the hands of muggers in recent days points to rising brutality among the criminals, which should be a matter of concern for the law enforcers. The use of fast moving vehicles such as cars and motorbikes in mugging is yet another issue that deserves serious attention. Criminologists would list reasons such as widespread unemployment and drug addiction among young people for rising criminal activities. Whatever may be the reasons, it is the job of police to contain crime and nab criminals.

A high DMP official, while talking to this paper, claimed to have taken adequate measures to check mugging in Dhaka city. But the truth is that more and more people are becoming targets of muggers daily at different points of the city. The Ministry of Home Affairs and Bangladesh Police honchos are heard talking tough these days in dealing with law and order situation in the country. The residents of Dhaka city would be happy if they demonstrate similar toughness on the ground, particularly in combating the rising incidents of mugging.