No end to violence against children

Even in a country where there are unnatural deaths galore and human lives seem to be as cheap as shreds, such an end to budding lives are sure to cause bleeding to hearts. But when a seventh grader falls victim to a neighbour's physical violence, most people feel mortified by the cruelty and inhumanity some members of society are capable of. The outrageous crime was committed against the seventh grader, named Osman Gani by a man who himself is also a father of a boy almost the same age as that of the deceased. The gruesome incident took place in a village under Chatkhil Upazila of Noakhali District on Sunday last.
An obtuse mind and selfish creature, the man had no capacity to feel that the boy was the moving light in the eyes of his parents like his own son is to him. What would have been his own position if his own son was so beaten to death!
Now what was Osman Gani's crime for drawing the wrath of the elderly neighbour? It was that Osman reportedly kicked the football the man's son was playing with on the lawn close to a road. When the ball rolled over to Osman who was sitting nearby, the boy delivered a kick. Unfortunately, by the impact of which, the ball landed on the roof of a one-storey building. The boy whose ball it was left the place crying without trying to retrieve the ball and informed his father of the incident.
What followed next is unbelievable. The enraged father rushed to catch hold of Osman and started beating the boy mercilessly with a wooden object. Left seriously injured, the boy was admitted to Noakhali Sadar Hospital and moved from there to Dhaka for better treatment but to no avail. Thus befell an outsize tragedy on Osman's family of four in which he seems to have been the only boy. How heart-rending it is to his mother in the absence of his father now employed in a Middle-east country!
It is a clear case of extreme form of violence against children. The perpetrator had an old grudge against the family because as a mason he wanted to build the newly constructed one-storey building Osman's family moved to live in from the capital city on during the last Ramadan. Indeed, there are cases where children are murdered to teach a lesson to families with which their rivals have land or other disputes. In some bizarre incidents, the police even unearthed murdering of own children in order to settle a score against rivals.
Then there are reports of children tied to trees before beating them on suspicion of theft or petty crimes. Overall, the country's record of treatment of children is not enviable. Children are maltreated on flimsy grounds. Sexual abuse of little girls are not uncommon. Society that is less caring of children's well-being have to pay a heavy price in the form of rise of anti-social goons. Today there are teenage gangs that have indeed become a headache for society. They are not only challenging the authorities of their elders but also adopting fast the mafia culture of extortion, murder, rape and mugging.
Once this capital saw the rise of different criminal gangs who had divided the city into their zones of influence. Their crimes were similar and therefore rarely did engage in turf wars. But the inhabitants of the city were living in an unbearably stifling terror regime. Mercifully those days are gone but the rise of teenage gangs does not at all augur well particularly for the capital, a few other towns, cities and society in general.
Surely, this legacy also finds its link---albeit not in so perceived a manner--- to political violence and animosity. When student politics thrives on mindless thuggery instead of intellectual and idealistic competition, its influence on society is bound to be negative. Social discrimination is at times revolted against in the form of mindless acts of cruelty. The myth that the population is a peaceful multitude of demography is often made a farce of by battles of lethal local weapons between groups within a village or between villages. During local polls, some armed clashes only put the nation to shame.
Before minds turn cruel, violent and criminal, they need proper nurturing and a caring environment. Fostering healthy culture alongside secular education can have a sobering influence on minds right from the young age. Society needs this for poise, peace and sustainability.