Destroying a teenager's future

What the Rapid Action Battalion has done to the young Limon Hossain of Jhalakati district is a clear outrage. The young man, aged sixteen, has had one of his legs amputated because some trigger-happy member of the force shot him at close range on the unsubstantiated charge that he is a member of a terrorist gang. The truth, as has since become known, is that the RAB personnel accosted Limon as he stepped out of his home to collect his family cattle, asked him about an individual they were looking for and then shot him the moment he answered in the negative. The young man, who was looking forward to taking part at the HSC examinations the next day, then bled for three hours before being taken all the way to Dhaka. By then, his leg had become useless.
This atrocity raises once more the question of the impunity with which RAB has been operating for years. Its allegation that Limon is a terrorist is rendered meaningless considering all the positive reports which have come from Limon's teachers, family and neighbours about his background. Like millions of others in rural Bangladesh, he struggles with poverty, works in a brick kiln for paltry wages and even borrows clothes from others in order to make a decent appearance in class. When RAB now charges him with criminality (it has filed two cases against him), one is impelled to ask if such insensitivity and impunity on its part can any more be ignored.
It is clear that the future of the young man has been damaged beyond repair. We demand swift action against those who shot Limon. It is indeed shocking that, even as we write this editorial, no one in the government has promised action against the RAB men behind this outrage. Are the authorities yet in denial mode about RAB excesses? It is the collective conscience of a nation that has now been aroused. It becomes everyone's duty to demand justice. It is for the government to go after the perpetrators of this grisly deed.