Police brutality on protestors

As if the sexual assault on Pahela Baishakh and subsequent inaction was not enough. Now the police swoop on protestors reminding the law enforcement agency that they have not performed their duty. Worse, a male member of the police violated all legal limits and traditional values by dragging a woman protestor by the hair and another kicking her from behind. Was there any provocation or particular reason for them to act so brutally? The police cannot and should not use force, violence or weapons, let alone summarily punish anyone when there is no attempt to resist arrest or attack. What danger that frail girl in the picture carried in most newspapers published from the capital posed to the police is beyond comprehension. Why was such outsize wrath unleashed on her?
And men in uniform like them stood silent spectators when women and girls were being molested a few yards away from where they were posted on the north-east side of the Teachers Students Centre of Dhaka University. They showed no interest to intervene even after a leader of a students organisation pleaded with them to protect women and girls from their molesters. The enthusiasm shown by the police to go into action against the protestors on Sunday and the indifference cannot be explained logically. For once, the difference between the hooligans responsible for the sexual attack on Pahela Baishakh and the law enforcers vanished with the latest police atrocities.
In civilised societies, the police cannot resort to physical violence against protestors. At best they repulse them when they try to break through the barricade or at times carry them away without ever hurting them. Was the Sunday's a violent protest? Here the police hardly need any provocation to unleash brutality on peaceful protestors. At times unsuspecting pedestrians caught in the melee also become a soft target of their atrocities. This is not the way of maintaining law and order. It is not a political demonstration in the usual sense. Here is an issue that calls for social awareness and the maximum possible cooperation from the police. But unfortunately, the administration is to blame for not taking the matter seriously. Intriguingly, the impression is that they are hiding some vital information in order to protect at least some of the assaulters.
This surely sends a wrong signal to the public. If the people cannot take the administration, the police in particular, into confidence, the agency loses a vital ingredient in its arsenal to fight crime. The bitter truth is that the agency has been used by the administration as a tool instead of allowing it to function independently without fear or favour. Erosion of confidence either in the administration and its various organs happens in a situation when none of those is allowed to grow as an institution. The police are no one's henchmen and they act so at times on the understanding -or misunderstanding -that they are there to serve party interests. In fact, they had to be apolitical and neutral in their uniform because they are defenders of the people in peril.