Dhaka, Oct 26 Bangladesh’s police chief on Monday said the main law enforcement agency would use “crossfire”, with government permission, if necessary to maintain law and order in the country.
Inspector General of Police (IGP) Md Ali Hossain Fakir, also chairman of Community Bank Bangladesh, made these remarks at a programme in Dhaka’s Chawkbazar to launch the bank’s Islamic banking services.
“If the government permits, we will stage crossfire where it is necessary,” the head of the main law enforcement agency said.
Fakir, however, urged people to allow police to discharge their duties in accordance with the law, alleging that “when the police use batons, they are called fascist police, while they remain silent, they are called weak police”.
“Under these circumstances, the police must be given a proper environment to work and be enabled to fulfil their duties,” he said.
The police chief accused a “section of journalists” of publishing reports calling the police an “ineffective” force only when they do not receive unethical benefits or money from drug trafficking and criminal activities.
“You (journalists) are not speaking out against drugs. Instead, you are secretly taking money from there. When you journalists do not get money from there, you write that the police have become ineffective,” Fakir said.
Police and the recently renamed elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) use the term “crossfire” virtually to describe staged extrajudicial killings or unlawful executions carried out by them.
These forces traditionally used to claim that the victim was caught in an accidental exchange of gunfire, either when criminals opened fire on a patrolling team or when an arrested suspect tried to escape or was rescued by armed accomplices.
Police and RAB came under heavy criticism by rights groups and political opponents during deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government for their actions in the name of “crossfire”.
Records suggest Bangladesh saw the first sensational extrajudicial killing of an ultra-left Maoist leader, Siraj Sikdar, in police custody in 1975 under circumstances identical to what would later be labelled as “crossfire”.
The phrase “crossfire”, however, entered Bangladesh’s mainstream security lexicon in March 2004 when the then BNP government under Prime Minister Khaleda Zia was formed as an elite composite anti-crime unit drawing personnel from the army, navy and air force alongside regular policemen.
Though the phenomenon was frequent during the then BNP regime, with Jamaat-e-Islami being its crucial partner in the alliance government at that time, the practice continued during the succeeding Awami League government, which was toppled in a violent street protest called the July Uprising on August 5, 2024.
(PTI News)
