[Bangla Daily Star] In Monday's Rajshahi violence four police officials were made the target of Shibir- inflicted brutality. Of them, the worst victim was on-duty Sub-Inspector Jahngir Alam at the Shalbagan area of the Rajshahi city.It is worthwhile to note that during the incident, the attackers made indiscriminate use of homemade bombs that emitted smoke to temporarily blind the victim police.
The Shibir men used similar tactics in their Sunday's attack in which the wrist of a member of riot police was blown away, while in another attack in November last year they snatched a weapon from a policeman in the city.
Recently, the members of the police have been increasingly coming under attacks from Shibir men in different parts of the country. This brings to the fore the issue of security of the members of the police force themselves. This is a sad commentary on the law-enforcers who are supposed to give security to the citizens, but are themselves coming under attack.
This is something unprecedented and there is no scope for taking it lightly. It is important to note that in most of the reported cases, the victims were not injured during combat with street agitators. On the contrary, they were targets of surprise attacks in isolated situations.
To all appearances, these terrorist attacks on the police are carried out in a pre-meditated fashion, the sole purpose of which is to create anarchy in society.
This is a new type of political violence the law-enforcers are faced with. The traditional methods of tackling street violence cannot work here. This calls for a different kind of approach to fight it. The police authorities need to give a harder look into the phenomenon and devise an appropriate strategy to face it.
When police security is threatened in this manner, one can easilily imagine the state of public security. The government cannot allow this to continue and must act affirmatively.