Impunity breeds criminality

It is widely felt by us, and more so by outsiders, that ours is a corrupt and criminality-plagued society. However, the number of convictions for such crimes hardly reflects the validity of the perception. If one analyses why criminality and corruption are so pervasive in the society, the first and foremost answer would be the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators.
In addition to numerous corruption cases during the 2-year tenure of the last CTG and the last 5 years of the AL-led government, for instance, hundreds of corruption and criminal cases were initiated against opposition politicians. It is dismaying to see that, except for a lone exception, none of those cases saw the light of day. This could be due to one or more of the following reasons. Firstly, all the cases could be politically motivated; secondly, the politicians could be clever enough not to leave any mark of their misdeeds; thirdly, the ACC and the investigating officials could be too ill-trained to investigate properly, resulting in faulty charge sheets; fourthly, there could be too many loopholes in the law; and finally, our judicial procedure takes inordinate time to conclude a case.
The recent acquittal of a corrupt politician in a money-laundering case has further dented the people's trust in our judicial system. Initially, it was widely suspected that it was a government-managed acquittal to pacify the main opposition. However, the subsequent and ongoing investigation against the alleged unaccountable wealth of the presiding judge (who has gone to Malaysia) has caused irreparable damage to the integrity of the institution, the last hope of the citizens.
We very often quote from the constitution that “all citizens are equal before the law,” yet we see that the BNP chairperson was treated above the law when she did not attend court hearings on the stipulated dates over and over again on ridiculous grounds. She was granted deferment 42 times in a single case, surely a record. What could be more of a travesty of the judiciary, the cornerstone of a society envisaging to be run by rule of law?
To further weaken the authority of the ACC, the then government enacted an amendment to a law last November, making it mandatory for the ACC to obtain prior permission for prosecuting public servants on corruption charges. This has only curtailed and weakened the power of the ACC and made it subservient to the executive authority so far as corruption of public servants is concerned. However, the High Court (HC) struck down the controversial amendment on January 30, saying that the incorporation of the new section in the ACC act 2004 contradicted the fundamental rights of citizens guaranteed in the Constitution. It is only natural to expect that the new minister of law, who himself was an ACC lawyer, will see to it that no appeal is made by the government against this highly popular ruling of the HC.
The cases involving the bombing at Udichi function, Ramna Batmul, CPB public meeting, Kibria murder and the August 21 mayhem apparently did not make much headway. These acts targeted the current ruling party adherents and its ideological allies and, as such, politics must not play any part in dispensing justice.     
In the midst of all these disappointments, there seems to be a little light at the end of the tunnel. On January 30, a decade after the country's biggest arms haul, a special court in Chittagong handed down death sentence and life term to two former ministers of Khaleda Zia's cabinet, 11 senior civil-military bureaucrats and an Indian separatist leader in two arms and smuggling cases.
However, whether these two ministers and the officers of intelligence agencies could be involved in the arms smuggling without the approval or instruction of the highest echelon of the government is a question that still remains to be answered. In a furious reaction, the convicted former state minister said: “I want the people who brought the arms to be tried.” He was asked to name those people. He, however, set aside the question and instead continued: “I have been wrongly implicated. It was a managed drama.”
In her reaction to the judgement BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia alleged that instead of rewarding the officials “who recovered 10 truckloads of arms in Chittagong,” the government had punished them. Has she told the truth? Yes, they risked their lives to challenge the people offloading the ammo onto trucks from two trawlers. They were told that the authorities were aware of the “goods” being offloaded and were threatened with dire consequences. But Alauddin and Helal braved the threats and called in security reinforcements to round up the smugglers and the arms stash. However, instead of being rewarded for bravery, these two sergeants were framed in fake arms cases, fired from the force and tortured in custody during the tenure of the BNP-Jamaat-led four-party alliance government. The two policemen were later proved innocent and got back their jobs in 2011.
Law Minister Anisul Huq expressed satisfaction with the judgment. “What will happen through this verdict is that anyone will be very careful not to commit a similar crime in the future,” he said while talking to reporters at the Secretariat. “The promise to establish rule of law has been fulfilled through this verdict,” he told journalists.
Let the words of the law minister, a seasoned lawyer, be the beginning of the end of impunity, which is the cause of recurrence of criminality and corruption. By the same token, let the investigation of alleged corruption against the six former AL ministers continue without undue meddling to usher in a new beginning and to enhance the badly needed moral boost of the new government.   

The writer is the Convenor of the Canadian Committee for Human Rights and Democracy in Bangladesh.