A PRIVATE university student was stabbed to death in the capital’s Badda area on Monday centering a quarrel on betting over Bangladesh Premier League cricket game to show how animal instinct is overpowering human values of our younger generation. Game betting is not new but killing is shocking every time to demand such criminalisation of betting must stop at all places.
The fact is that game betting and also gambling is growing alarmingly in the country taking advantage of the laxity of law and order in absence of police vigilance on crime gangs. Even police are reportedly sheltering such crimes for their nexus with locally powerful groups while they are otherwise busy in political duty and toll collection. Lawlessness is thus gripping the city and the countryside causing havoc to the life of common people.
The varsity student – a third semester BBA student got killed on Monday morning following an altercation with the betting group on Sunday night in his neighbourhood. His fault was that he asked them not to pollute the social environment with noisy shouting and avoid other notoriety and keep away from his home.
As media reports said the angry gangsters had threatened to kill him on that very night over telephone and with no mistake carried the killing stabbing the boy next morning outside his home. Relatives took him to local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. The loss of a varsity going boy is too big to a family but the addicts who loved gambling have no love for a life although the boy was not a stranger but a resident of their own locality.
Killing incidents in the metropolis and also all over the country is now increasingly threatening public safety and social peace. Some being killed like the young varsity boy on slight quarrel while many other killings are related to factional quarrel for control of local business, land dispute or extra-marital relation. At least six people were killed in the capital and its outskirts since Thursday including a girl and her father at their home in Badda, a mother and her son in Kakrail and a teenager in Keraniganj on Sunday night. The question is that if people are not safe in family quarters or outside the home, how the government can claim authority to run the country. Police are no help to the people.
Particularly killing over game betting is growing fast. On May 6, another young man was killed over IPL betting. The news captured global headlines. Just over a month into that incident, another young man died by suicide in Jamalpur after losing a betting on India-Pakistan cricket match of ICC trophy. Death of three persons was reported in 2014 and 2015 each over betting related incidents. The crime must be stopped before too long.
