We often find police reports published in the media with live pictures of recovery of revolvers and other type of government guns from people implicated in criminal activities. Almost all Awami League leaders — old and young — have guns. In fact, carrying arms have become part of criminal activities.
A national daily published a report of detectives for gathering details of who illegally own Uzi pistols, a military-grade semi-automatic weapon imported in absence of monitoring by the authorities and going into the hands of drug dealers and other high profile criminals. It said arms dealers are importing the high power weapons declaring as ‘rifle’ and selling it to civilians who are prohibited to use it for being a big risk to public safety. Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) has already got the list of the arms holders who purchased at least 53 of it from six authorised dealers who have imported 111 Uzis in the last five years.
The “Uzis” looks more like a submachine gun and hold 20 bullets while service pistols used by law enforcers can hold 15. Detectives have launched the investigation after they recovered an Uzi pistol from the possession of a drug dealer on August 20 in the capital. It was similarly imported as a rifle, the report said, quoting a Deputy Commissioner of DB police in the city.
Such reports do not surprise us and if details are disclosed it will be found that politically powerful people mostly owned these dangerous weapons. Weapons are their power to show that they must be feared no matter how illegal their activities are. The general public is aware of the spread of weapons in the country making life unsafe and crimes easy. The police administration has been politicised to be independent law enforcers.
We are convinced that it is too late for this fading government to collect the weapons. Criminalised politics mean politics of guns. Nowadays we have no criminals unconnected with political leadership. But these weapons must be recovered for the safety of public life. Crimes are riding alarmingly.
The silly view of the government that harsh laws themselves are the solution for checking crimes is not working. In fact, the existing laws are not enforced. The government does not law for punishing those they want to punish. Abuse of the law and the justice system is pushing the country dangerously to lawlessness. Pointing out the problems is not worth when the government lives in their own world disconnected from the realities.
We must say presence of such powerful weapons in the hands of underworld criminals is a big threat to the country’s law and order having the potentials to challenge law enforcers and cause bloodbath anytime. They can use it to hold their rivals hostage and kill them without leaving any trace. It sounds terribly shocking that our law enforcers were not aware of the presence of the military grade weapon in the hands of the criminals over the past years as dealers were importing those under false declaration and selling to their clients which may even include political operatives in many cases.
