It is quite ludicrous that a physically challenged man whose right arm has been deformed since birth has been made one of the 52 people accused of violently attacking the police using sharp instruments like machetes. A man who can barely lift his arm and begs for a living has now to appear before the court, accused by the Jamalganj Police Station two days before the last general elections.

Tara Mia, like hundreds of others have been accused in various cases surrounding the polls last December. What is even more astonishing is the fact that he has no clue of the charges against him. What we would like to know is what happened to the order from police authorities to scrutinise how such absurd cases were filed in the last quarter of 2018. Because they keep popping up where hundreds if not thousands of people are accused of having committed acts of sabotage or violence in places where local residents claim no such incident has ever occurred. And this is not the first time that such cases have been lodged. In the very recent past, even dead people have been named accused in cases of arson and vandalism.

Our journalists had earlier visited 10 spots which has been claimed by the police as "place of occurrence" in the aftermath of the BNP rally on September 30 at Suhrawardy Udyan. But local businessmen, street vendors, and shop owners—no one said there had been any incidences of vandalism during that period. It is time that the Police HQ conducted an internal enquiry to find out precisely what is going on in different parts of the country and how these ghost cases keep popping up, accusing, as in this case, a physically challenged person of attacking on duty policemen—an act which he is physically incapable of committing. We feel that those that lodge such cases deserve severe strictures from the concerned authorities.