Challenge, when accosted

Senior police officials, beleaguered by too many incidents of fake policemen committing crimes in their name, have advised the public not to be intimidated if they are ever accosted by fake, or real, law enforcers. Instead, we should challenge them boldly and ask for their identity. That's well within the rights of citizens. The good news is, such a gang, masquerading as DB (Detective Branch) Police, has reportedly been caught from the city's Mirpur area last week. They, 10 of them together, were about to start one of their operations around 7.30 in the evening, equipped with wireless sets, handcuffs and a vehicle with a bold 'POLICE' sticker on it! That's enough to terrorise the generally faint-hearted people and rob them of their money and materials. Thugs and thieves have gotten away too often with such mischief, thus giving whoever they dress as, a really bad name. This scribe, sometime in the 1970s was accosted by one solitary policeman around midnight in Chittagong's Jamalkhan Road as he got off the Dhaka-Chittagong bus and landed on a lonely pavement. The fellow wanted to check the passenger's luggage. The student, then in the prime of fearless youth, was coming home from a DU hall to spend the summer holidays with his parents. He looked the supposed policeman straight in the eye and asked him to first show his identity card. That seemed to drain all the blood from the would-be hijacker's face. His bravado collapsed under the weight of a simple query and the poor fellow, without even a fake identity card on him, shuffled and suddenly appeared in a great hurry to leave the spot! But that was more than three decades ago. Today, masqueraders are not so timid and come armed with weapons and identity cards. To the horror of every self-respecting media person, the identity of a journalist ---- of both the print and electronic media --- seems to have become more attractive among all kinds of hijackers and toll collectors. It is perhaps more easy to pull off than the identity of a member of the Defence Forces! We are told, felons and fraudsters of all kinds in Dhaka's Savar area have been going about their assorted businesses by flashing identity cards of this or that media company. This came to light after a number of fake media men were caught in the act last year ---- by real policemen! One was caught brandishing an identity card with the logo of a private satellite channel, and trying to extract a toll from an establishment at Savar. No journalist worth the name would ever go rent-seeking so barefacedly. And the youth indeed had confessed to having adopted the fake identity on the advice of a friend. After having failed his HSC exam he was looking for a criminal shortcut to income and purchased the press identity from another shady outfit. A similar 'journalist' card was found in the possession of even a truck driver, we understand! The two reportedly testified that there were at least 200 others who had bought these from another who posed as the GM of the said channel! Sociologists perhaps can tell us whether or not such scandalous incidents are happening 'naturally' as a fallout from the general criminalisation of the body-politic. Or are they being orchestrated by mischief-makers to destabilise the country, as conspiracy theorists suspect? Thankfully, our law enforcers are not always sitting on their hands. They recently unearthed a number of underground dens engaged in manufacturing counterfeit currencies and certificates so like the original that one shudders to think what the long-term effects of it all will be on the state, if our law enforcers are not alert and equipped to fight them. Otherwise, it would be difficult for Bangladesh to stay afloat under the onslaught of so much cheating, so much disgracing of all our vital institutions. So let us beware!