Dreadful disappearances, killings

OF all the crimes that rob the citizens of a minimum sense of security, the so-called mysterious disappearances and the victims' gruesome discovery as corpses are perhaps the worst. The premeditated cold-blooded vanishing acts bore their barbaric marks on the decapitated dead bodies, floating in a river or a pond as in Noakhali or found in septic tank as in Chittagong, on Monday. The sweep of the murderous assault reads of a brazen defiance of law drawing oxygen from the law enforcers' lowering of guard, or deliberately looking away in order to avert being on the wrong side of the local power equations or rivalries.   
It is a telling indictment on the state of preventive and deterrent law enforcement on the part of the local administrations. Although they have recovered the corpses of two Jubo League and Chhatra Dal workers, two Chhatra League workers and three unidentifiable dead bodies, the police have little clue as to how these happened except to speculate that the incidents might have been rooted in political or turf rivalries.
It appears political violence has ratcheted up since before the January 5 election winding its way through the three phases of upazila elections. The preparations of law and order forces were centered around the elections, with the result that in the sequel, police and community vigilances against the latest spate of ghastly crime could not prove equal to the task.