Death of a Supreme Court lawyer

We condole the unfortunate death of M U Ahmed, a Supreme Court lawyer and a former assistant attorney general. Our heart goes out to the bereaved family. We are outraged by the manner of his death because, in spite of the technical arguments proffered by the police, he was in police custody when he was struck by heart attack. And, whatever may have been the reason for his illness, he was in their custody when he passed away.
It may be true that it was indeed heart attack that struck Mr. Ahmed down, but none of the technicalities offered by the police in support of their arguments, that the dead person was not in their custody, will wash with public.
There are three issues here namely, anomaly of facts, loss of credibility of the law enforcing agencies, and the apparent unresponsiveness of the government to do something about it.
The statements of the police are not only incongruous we also consider the attempt to shrug off responsibility of the death disingenuous. If it was a non-bailable charge could the police have set him on bail without producing him before the court? How is it, reportedly, that the court was not informed of his arrest? And if the accused was on bail, why were there police guards over him? Is it a regular feature to have policemen guarding patients in hospitals?
The government must take note of the way public confidence in the credibility of law enforcing agencies has waned. There have been too many instances of extrajudicial deaths in the hands of RAB and deaths in police custody. And inexplicably too, some of these are politically related. And whatever may be the facts, the public perception is that it is the highhandedness of the law enforcing agencies that are responsible for the deaths.
The government cannot be oblivious of the severe dip in public confidence in the law enforcing agencies, and consequently in the government, a situation that it must act fast to correct.
In this regard we fully endorse the call by Barrister Rafiq-ul Huq for a judicial enquiry which one hopes should come up with the actual causes of death, and whether the police had anything to do with it.