Human Rights Commission South Asia

CONTACT US     RESOURCES & LINKS       ABOUT US        HUMAN RIGHTS  REPORTS        CONTRIBUTE

REFUSAL TO ENTRETAIN A MURDER CASE.

The other day a sixty-year old woman at Savar was kicked and beaten to death by police. The cops had gone to her residence to investigate alleged kidnapping of a girl. We are simply appalled by the incident. We have been witnessing heightened brutalities of the police for quite some time now. In this case it is of a horrific proportion since the act of brutality takes place at one's own home and that too against an old woman apparently unconnected with the incident. Even if involved, should she have been killed so brutally?
We understand that in the meantime the administration has suspended three personnel of the local police station. Our concern, however, is that incidents of brutality took place in the past and matters were hushed up or some immediate pacifying actions were taken by the administration like suspension of a police officer or his transfer from one place to another.


To us this is clearly a case of brutal murder and thus legal proceedings should be drawn against those involved. But inexplicably, the police refused to register the incident as a murder case.


Cases like these are a challenge to  justice system and hence cannot be treated merely as an administrative issue. Only recently no less a person than the IGP himself in an interview said that there is no provision for 'closing' a police personnel "in the police code". Suspension of the concerned policemen is one thing but legal proceedings against murders are quite another. The first and foremost duty of the law enforcers or the legal apparatus is to uphold the supremacy of law. Often the results of departmental actions against an offender end up in cold storage and never made public and thus the aggrieved are denied justice.