Police’s short shrift may have cost a life

By any definition the killing of Shahinuddin was a most gruesome and well-planned murder motivated by unashamed greed and business considerations. The victim's reluctance to sell off his bit of land possession to a former lawmaker turned—real estate—developer led eventually to Shahin's death. Reportedly, the victim was attacked three times in the last six years, and had also received many threats to his life. Last time he was attacked by a group of criminals was in November last year. He fought for his life and survived. And despite filing several general diaries in this regard, the victim was unlucky not to survive the seventh attack on him on May 16.

The comment of the police is worth the note, that the victim did not report to the police station to provide details. We wonder whether the required details should not have been obtained when the GD was being filed in the first place. And we believe that it is for the police to determine what kind of security it should provide to anyone filing a GD on grounds of threat to his life, regardless of whether the complainant had gone to meet the alleged accused. Isn't it wrong for the police to believe that doing so mitigates the risk to the complainant's life?  In this regard one cannot brush aside the reality that a lawmaker has considerable influence on the law enforcing agencies, and that in this instance too the police were not impervious to extraneous pressure on them.   There is good reason to think that power pressure and perquisites had something to do with the way the police reacted in this case. We are constrained to suggest that this kind of behaviour is representative of the way the law enforcing agencies generally deal with general complaints and even first information reports. When can we expect them to ward off all kinds of influences and deal with each case on its merits, regardless of the identity or political links of either the complainant or the accused?