On a Tuesday afternoon in Dhaka’s affluent Baridhara Diplomatic Zone, a speeding vehicle mounted the pavement and crushed 24-year-old Mehedi Hasan to death.
Mehedi was not jaywalking or dodging traffic; he was a construction worker resting on a sidewalk after long hours of manual labour.
Behind the wheel was a 17-year-old boy -- an underage driver operating a high-powered car far beyond his legal right or operational skill.
Within hours, the predictable machinery of class-based privilege creaked into motion.
Initial reports highlighted the teenager’s swift release into family custody before public outrage forced his re-arrest.
Days later came the ultimate manifestation of elite transactionality: A private financial settlement of Tk9 lakh handed to the victim’s grief-stricken family -- Tk1 lakh for funeral expenses, Tk8 lakh for his elderly parents -- in exchange for an agreement to withdraw the case and support bail.
Since this specific case remains sub judice, we cannot render a final verdict on the courtroom outcomes. Nor should we speculate on individual legal guilt.
Yet, the public spectacle of cash exchanging hands in the wake of a lost human life forces us to look in the mirror.
It exposes a deeply rooted social pathology: In our society, justice is not an unalienable right -- it is a negotiable commodity.
A tradition of purchased impunity
The Baridhara incident is not an isolated tragic error; it is the latest entry in a long, shameful history where financial muscle weaponizes the law against the powerless.
Across decades, Bangladesh’s economic elite have operated under the implicit assumption that wealth buys immunity.
In the 1990s and 2000s, political scions and industrial heirs routinely turned city streets into private racetracks.
When pedestrian fatalities occurred, the script was almost always identical: An underling or driver was substituted as the accused, local law enforcement looked the other way, and quiet payouts silenced impoverished families who lacked the financial stamina to fight long legal battles.
By the 2010s, this impunity matured from vehicular manslaughter into far more insidious territories.
The infamous 2021 case involving the tragic death of Mosarat Jahan Munia exposed how immense corporate and financial power could wrap itself in legal shields, leaving a grieving family to navigate a maze of delays and narrative manipulation.
The public watched as influence appeared to soften the sharp edges of criminal accountability.
This dynamic is hardly unique to Bangladesh. Across South Asia and the broader global landscape, wealth frequently tilts the scales of justice.
In India, high-profile hit-and-run sagas -- most notably the decades-long legal battle involving Bollywood star Salman Khan -- demonstrated how money and celebrity can stretch judicial processes over decades, exhausting victims' families until justice becomes a distant, abstract concept.
In the United States, the controversial "affluenza" defense allowed Ethan Couch -- a wealthy teenager who killed four pedestrians while driving intoxicated -- to initially escape prison time after defense attorneys argued his privileged upbringing prevented him from understanding the consequences of his actions.
Whether termed "out-of-court settlements," "compensation," or legal technicalities, the pattern remains identical: The rich kill or destroy, and money cleans up the residue.
The illusion of consent
Defenders of private settlements often argue from a pragmatic standpoint: A poor family loses its sole breadwinner, criminal trials in our region take decades, so cash offers immediate relief.
This argument is a moral trap.
To call a Tk9 lakh transaction a "voluntary settlement" between a wealthy family and a destitute one is a gross distortion of reality.
When a bereaved family facing immediate starvation takes a settlement, they are not forgiving the perpetrator; they are surrendering to their own vulnerability.
It is coercive necessity masquerading as consent.
When money is allowed to neutralize criminal accountability, the justice system effectively sets a market price on human life.
It sends a terrifying message to the working class: Your lives exist on a sliding price scale.
If a driver is wealthy enough, your death is merely an out-of-pocket expense -- a minor inconvenience resolved with a bank transfer.
Reimagining reform: Beyond juvenile detention and hush money
If we are to break this cycle of transactional justice, our legal and social frameworks require an immediate overhaul, particularly regarding underage offenders and the ethics of mercy.
While juvenile protection laws exist to rehabilitate young offenders, they were never intended to act as a shield for gross criminal negligence.
When an underage individual takes the wheel of a heavy automobile and operates it recklessly on public roads, the act carries predictable, lethal consequences.
Treating such cases merely as minor juvenile infractions sends a message of zero consequence.
Where severe harm or death occurs, juvenile detention alone is insufficient -- there must be serious, formal legal accountability, including holding guardians legally and financially liable for enabling the crime.
Mercy is a noble element of justice, but mercy cannot be negotiated through a wire transfer.
True repentance requires accountability, remorse, and systemic restitution -- not hush money delivered before a bail hearing.
When guilt begets compensation aimed at erasing criminal charges, it ceases to be mercy and becomes corruption.
The social solution
Where the formal legal system struggles against the influence of wealth, society must step in.
If the law can be slowed down or bought off, social standing must not be.
We must ask ourselves hard, introspective questions about the culture we tolerate:
- In our social circles, how do we treat families who use their wealth to sweep reckless, life-taking behaviour under the rug?
- Do we continue to invite them to our dinner tables, business galas, and social clubs?
- In our homes, do we allow our children to associate freely with peers who display outright contempt for human life and legal boundaries?
- Do we evaluate potential suitors and social alliances solely by their bank accounts, willfully blind to character and ethical rot?
It is time to turn wealth from a shield into an irrelevance when basic humanity is at stake.
The families who use money to silence the families of victims should face uncompromising social ostracization.
Their money should buy them no respect, no social invitations, and no community standing.
Until society makes it clear that wealth cannot purchase reputational immunity, the streets will remain unsafe for the poor, and the law will remain a tool that only binds those who cannot afford to buy their way out.
Wafiur Rahman looks after the business desk at Dhaka Tribune.