The vicious circle of crime and punishment

Crime likens to math in the sense that some problems take longer time to solve, while many also remain hopelessly unresolved. The speed at which the killers of Rajon in Sylhet have been apprehended gives us hope, but it also reminds us of the disappointing foot-dragging in investigations on the murders of journalist couple Sagar and Runi, and the abductions of BNP leaders Ilyas Ali and Salahuddin Ahmed. These high profile examples only accentuate a critical concern that deserves our attention. When people vanish like camphor or murders are swept under the rug, it speaks of how a country treats its citizens.

In a way, crimes, like tourist sites, also speak volumes about how a nation views itself. That's why the fear of crimes and perceptions of social disorder are widespread in developing countries, while rule of law and justice are the hallmarks of life in developed ones. That doesn't mean crime doesn't happen in more advanced countries. But punishment is administered to criminals in the manner medicine is administered to patients. Illness may not be prevented or cured, but medical attention is guaranteed.

To use the FBI terminology, the national "clearance rate" for homicide in the United States today is 64.1 percent, which fifty-some years ago was more than 90 percent. Criminologists estimate that at least 200,000 murders have gone unsolved in the most powerful country of the world since the 1960s. That is enough to convince us that it's impossible to get to the bottom of every single murder mystery for the same reason one can never finish counting the stars in the sky.

But nations should be able to resolve some of their mysteries, especially those which attract collective attention. The Americans identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the killer of John F Kennedy, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan as the killer of Robert Kennedy and James Earl Ray as the killer of Martin Luther King, although conspiracy theories suggest they were merely the hands that pulled the triggers while real culprits eluded justice. Yet, all said and done, most Americans are pretty much satisfied that at least one person was found guilty for each of those crimes. It brought a closure in their minds.

In our country, two heads of governments were assassinated in the last 44 years, and the killers of one have been identified, some punished already. The assassination of the other political figure during an aborted coup attempt still remains a mystery as much as the killing of the army general, who allegedly masterminded it. A number of officials were convicted and hanged, but the cry for justice persists in our minds in the manner of an unhappy spirit trapped inside a haunted house. More than punishing the guilty, it allegedly has made a travesty of justice as invisible hands victimised scapegoats.

Particularly so, when all fingers point at one individual like the needle of a compass always points north. And that exception also exists on the global scene when an American president is known to have lied to the world, creating ground for his intention to invade another country. George Bush is the living example of how the whole world was taken for a ride by a mischievous man to execute his nefarious scheme.

Curiously, punishment is often like curd because it has its coagulation time. Almost 44 years later, the war criminals in this country are getting their comeuppance. It's said that every crime leaves a trace and it's up to those who investigate to arrive at their conclusions. In case of the atrocious killings of Sagar and Runi, the disappearances of Ilyas Ali and reappearance of Salahuddin Ahmed, it isn't even clear if the investigators have made an effort to draw their conclusions. 

Sherlock Holmes says in The Bascombe Valley Mystery that there is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact. The most obvious of the obvious facts is that a crime can happen only if someone has committed it. In case of Rajon, the killers couldn't have made it more obvious than committing their crime in broad daylight. The murders of the journalist couple or abductions of the BNP leaders were diametrically different. These crimes took place in the middle of the night, when most people were sleeping. 

What wasn't sleeping during those nights, however, is truth, which is being manipulated to create smokescreens. Crimes are hard to crack when truth is trivialised with an agenda, and we have seen many examples in our short history. The killers of the father of this nation have faced trial and the war criminals are currently paying for their sins.

Those who are hiding the truth mustn't forget its irony. Crime proved many times that it can be like a lost cat that eventually returns home. A nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it.

The writer is the editor of the weekly First News and an opinion writer for The Daily Star.
Email: badrul151@yahoo.com