Unrequited love has ever remained a source of great tragedies. With the mental makeup of today's youths changing fast, one-sided advances are increasingly growing violent. A series of violent crimes committed by jilted lovers in recent times should be considered a highly alarming development. It is more so because such crimes have proved contagious. Once a mind-boggling crime takes place anywhere, others obsessed with revenge take cue from it. It happened in case of acid-throwing, eve-teasing, stalking, murder after rape even by men in uniform and, in another variant, video-filming the sexual violation either for extortion or taking further sexual advantage, cruelty to children and now hacking or stabbing for unrequited love.
Two of the recent victims were mere teenage girls -one in the capital and the other in a village under Madaripur district -who were waylaid by stalkers in almost similar conditions. One girl was stabbed nearby her school as she was crossing a road on way home and the other on way to school. But in the latest such incident, the stalker and murderer is an activist of student politics. He holds an important position on the committee of his organisation. This is rather frightening.
There is no doubt that a rot has set in student politics. Yet leaders or activists of student organisations have avoided making female students their targets of violence. A stray bullet at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, however, caused the death of a girl student. This time the student leader from Sylhet has stooped too low to hack a girl he claimed he loved. No matter if the girl survives or not, the student leader has disgraced all who lead followers of his student organisation.
Student leaders are expected to lead by example. Let it be just a case of isolated roguishness -nothing more. There is, though, no way to be assured. He has betrayed a mental trait of enormous negative significance for society. A ruffian or anti-social goon is not expected to give a good account of himself. But when men in positions and their adult sons are found behaving irrationally or committing crimes, confidence in the country's legal system and governance erodes. When a lawmaker is found to shoot a boy without provocation, it surely sends a wrong message. If a son of a member of parliament forcibly takes possession of someone else's retiring resort to spend night with girls, or another shoots in disgust when stuck in long tailback, the could-not-care-less mentality is amply in display.
All such incidents set bad examples. It is exactly here governance has a deterrent role to play. If the accused are made to face law immediately after the incidents and meted out exemplary punishment others would not feel prompted to commit not only similar crimes but also any other in the law book.
It is clear that refinement is increasingly becoming a rare mental attribute in society. Violence in politics has a lot to do with this. Why should student politics be marred by violence when the purpose of learning is to refine mind through education? If education does not teach courtesy and help acquire refined culture, it is hardly any system of education. Rough and roguish, the learners can earn academic degrees but their minds remain unenlightened. When unenlightened or dark, minds are capable of doing the unpredictable. Unpredictability is just a step away from committing crimes -be they small or grave.
Crimes surely call for desperation and the degree of desperation is on the rise in today's world. Unrequited love led to wars even but at no point did one act so cowardly as to attack the loved one when she is unguarded and vulnerable. Heroism has vanished altogether. In the past, a lover had the courage to take his own life because the offer has been unreturned. Some became famous poets or composer of unforgettable songs simply because they were jilted. But today most of the so-called lovers are pathologically impulsive and appear not to be in control of their baser instincts.
That some crimes become contagious, it seems, owes to the media. The devil in some just leaps out with the prospect of deriving sadistic pleasure from some barbaric acts they come across courtesy of the media. When one after another teenage boys were tortured to death in the most inhuman circumstances, it caught like a wildfire. Why? Because the criminal was already in the heart waiting for a chance to try the bizarre.
Now the stalking looks the latest dangerous fad with a section of self-proclaimed lovers. They are likely to try their hand at similar monstrosity. So, the need is to frame cases against the criminals all of whom in the three much publicised incidents have been caught -either red-handed or quite early. They should be tried as much speedily as possible in order to give them exemplary punishment. There is need for a deterrent effect on this fresh criminal propensity.
Apart from this short-term measure, society should review its education system. Instead of pressurising children to learn the commercially oriented education, there should be an emphasis on imparting lesson by which they learn refinement in behaviour and character building. Enlightenment of mind should be the ultimate goal.
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