It has been more than a month since the anti-government blockade started. With it came continuous spells of hartal, and while Molotov cocktails have become part-and-parcel of the 20-party alliance strategy, it appears that firearms are about to join the fray. The police have recently unearthed an illegal racket of arms whereby dealers are using children as arms carriers. From what has been reported in this newspaper, three boys were recently detained with foreign-made pistols and ammunition in Narayanganj and a locality in the capital city. What is interesting to note is that while a tip-off alerted law enforcers to detect and apprehend the suspects, it is still not clear who the intended recipients of these firearms were. Even more alarming is the use of under-aged children to be purveyors as they usually are not suspected to be on law enforcement scanner. 

The apprehended have been sent to the juvenile correction system and as arms cases are serious business, their future is certainly not very bright. If convicted, and there is no reason to assume otherwise, the course of their lives will have been permanently altered. But more than these children, the focus should be entirely on pursuing the mentors and users of children and putting them behind bars; because until this is combated at the root, the expedient practice may be replicated with grave danger of killing child innocence. Law enforcers must treat the matter with all seriousness for we do not want to see any repetition of child abuse in its worse manifestation.