Muggers return with vengeance

Muggers seem to have returned to the city with a vengeance. For a while their ubiquitous presence was no longer the order of the day. Only occasionally were they on the prowl. The law enforcers prevailed on them to leave for them a narrow role to play on the sideline. Even the death of a five-month old infant following his fall from his mother's lap on a moving rickshaw near Doyaganj police check-post last month has failed to swing the police into coordinated action against the goons. Last Friday, muggers took two lives at the time of snatching a woman's vanity bag and a trader's belonging.

In both cases, the muggers demonstrated ultimate savagery in order to get their way. One of these incidents took place in Dhanmondi area where the muggers tried to snatch the woman's bag from a car. A hospital employee, the woman fell from rickshaw as she was entangled with the bag's straps. The car had dragged her some distance before her head was crushed under the wheel of the speeding car. This is the second such incident to have happened in the capital. A few years back in a similar incident in the city's Shukrabad area near the New Model College, another woman was dragged like this and she breathed her last in hospital. In this latest incident also the woman stood no chance of survival when the car ran over her head. She did not survive.

The other death involving a trader in workshop business was due to multiple stabbing near Sayedabad rail gate. His crime was an attempt to resist mugging. The man ran to a hospital with his injuries but profuse bleeding proved too much for him.

So here is a new breed of muggers which is not only daring but also most brutal in its actions. To these gangs, the target is not a human being who may fail pains but an object of prey. When an unsuspecting victim, woman in particular, falls from rickshaw, she is hurt enough. Now what perversity and brutality can prompt a gang to drag her on the road? Not that she wanted to save the bag instead of her life. Only the circumstances did not allow her to disentangle from the accursed bag. But the muggers could not care less. They had to make their operation successful no matter if it necessitates giving the victim as much pain as is possible before its death. Not that they committed the murder because their own lives were threatened. In the incident of stabbing too, the murderous instinct was overpowering.

Ferocious and animalistic, the brutes seem to have lost all human feelings. Now the law enforcement agencies would do a disservice not only to their profession but also to the land they serve if they fail to nab the muggers. There is a hunch that the law enforcers are quite aware of the hideouts of the muggers or how at times do their drives against the gangs nearly eliminate such incidents!

Muggers used to resort mostly to tricks or intrigues in order to rob people of their money and other belongings. Now they have been crossing their limits and do not hesitate to kill people. This is a new trend. Before this becomes pervasive, it is better to act and act decisively. The law enforcement agencies are quite efficient here to nab criminals. Now they must get their acts together in order to bring the two gangs responsible for last Friday's murder and eliminate further threat to lives from them.