Muggers are on the prowl with malevolent intention. For quite sometime they remained inactive. Now these criminal gangs seem to have stepped up their activity with renewed vigour. In the past week alone muggers carried out three operations -all in broad daylight -at Uttara, Savar and in New Market area. The pattern of mugging in all such cases was same. The muggers snatched Tk 0.6 million each in the first two incidents and Tk1.2 million in the third such incident by stopping a car and a bus at gun point. They also fired blank shots at the time of mugging.
Two more mugging incidents also took place -one at Rupganj, Narayanganj and another at Tikatuly - on Tuesday night and Friday morning with some variations. In the Rupganj incident muggers wielded sharp weapons but beat up a tradesman before snatching away his motor cycle and Tk 1.2 million. At Tikatuly, the muggers with help from driver and helper of a public bus stabbed two fish traders in the running bus and took away Tk 60,000 before abandoning the bus with the injured fish traders at some point in between Tikatuly and Syedabad.
Such increased activities by muggers are surely a cause for concern. Even of more concern is the way they are now operating. They stop running buses or cars to carry on their operations or commit crime in the running buses. Such incidents were rare in the past. Now in just one week, they have created their own nefarious records.
At a time like this, people want to feel assured by counter measures taken by the law enforcement agencies. But there was hardly any progress in getting at the muggers. Muggers used to applying ointment to their victims' eyes could not get a strong foothold in the face of a concerted police drive in the past. Only a few stray incidents of such mugging were reported in the past several months. But now these gangs look daring enough. They have lethal weapons or firearms which they do not hesitate to make good use of in order to get their nerdy way.
So it seems the new breed of criminals is a combination of muggers and robbers in a package. Unlike their predecessors, they seem to be more violent than necessary and have opted for a more open operation. Unless a daredevil, it is impossible to target passengers in a running car or bus. They force the drivers to halt the bus in order to decamp after their operation. To crack these hard nuts, the law enforcers will have to be alert at the maximum. Better it would be to heighten vigil in order to keep their movement under constant watch. They must be ambushed before they can carry out their operations. Better still it would be to follow them to their dens and bust those so that they get eliminated before they consolidate their positions in and around the capital.
Crimes of any sort have their prevalence once they are not effectively countered during the initial period. If this new trend of fearsome mugging is not made difficult for muggers, they will feel encouraged to carry on many such operations. Let the law enforcement agencies give a good account of themselves before these criminals make a hell of commuters' and city people's life.
- Saturday, 23 November 2024 |
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