That a team of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) has arrested six members of a gang of highway robbers following a robbery the gang committed on a running bus on Chattogram-Cox's Bazar highway on Friday last testifies to the heightened capability of the law enforcers to nab criminals. A shadow investigation by the RAB led to their arrest. According to the gang's own admission, it committed the crime three more times on the same highway this month alone. Early last month, police arrested 11 members of another gang of robbers which used a cave in Sitakindas its hideout. This gang committed about 200 robberies mostly on Dhaka-Chattagram highway in the past five years. Arrests of such robbers were made in several other cases in the past few months. In fact, a search on the internet reveals that hardly a month since June last has passed without one or more incidents of robbery being committed.
This was not quite unexpected. Even in normal times, daring robberies were committed on almost all the highways. At times the robbers used to make routine raids on night coaches running on segments of the Dhaka-Jashore highway. The robbers put up barriers with felled timbers or logs to stop night coaches and swoop on the passengers. Increased police patrol and follow-up actions have been able to take care of this problem. Dacoits also targeted trucks carrying goods and covered vans for a long period. They would stop such vehicles on gun point and take control of the steering wheel to take those off the highway to an alley or a branch road where another vehicle waited to be loaded. Happily, such incidents are rarely reported now.
What is worrying is the fact that robbers are adopting ingenious ways in carrying out their dreadful operations. On the night of October 5, a man was murdered inside the bus on way to Mirpur from Savar. The murdered person was the only passenger and the rest were robbers who hired the bus to entice passengers to take a ride. No one is supposed to smell a rat when a large number of robbers masquerade as passengers. The murdered man tried to resist because he thought there were passengers like him who would come to his help. How should he know all the passengers were birds of the same feather! His resistance led to his murder, as revealed by the nine members of the gang arrested later on. Another gang arrested recently used an extended network of digital devices in order to spot, trace and attack their victims.
The fact is that the economic crisis caused by the pandemic has compelled many people to become more daring than before and opt for desperate ---albeit unlawful --- methods for survival. But the records of most robber gangs and their leaders have one thing in common: after coming out of prison on bail or otherwise, they do not take long to commit the same crime. Pre-emptive strike on gangs to dismantle their bastions rather than arrest after the crime has been committed is a better option. These are smart and intelligent guys. If there were correction centres in the true sense of the term, these men could be reformed and rehabilitated in society. In fact, steps should be taken towards turning gradually all the prisons into correction centres.