Ever since the fall of the previous government, Bangladesh’s law and order landscape has become volatile to say the least. While the current circumstances are nowhere near the sheer lawlessness we collectively observed immediately following the ouster of the Awami League government, it is clear that the prevailing circumstances are still less than ideal.
While the press wing of the interim government had earlier cited official data suggesting that the crime trend has been stable with no significant increase in major criminal offenses over the past 10 months, it has less to do with the frequency of crimes and more to do with their brazenness.
For context, just recently a 25-year-old man was stabbed dead in broad daylight in the capital’s Mohammadpur area. According to a Daily Star report, the stabbing took place near the gates of Martyred Intellectuals Memorial in Rayer Bazar in the afternoon. The victim, Fazle Rabbi Sumon, was injured critically in the attack and had been taken to Shikder Medical College Hospital and then shifted to Dhaka Medical College Hospital where doctors declared him dead soon after.
Again, it is the brazen nature of the attack that comes to fore, with the assailant not thinking twice about stabbing someone in broad daylight which points to an element of being emboldened on the part of the attacker.