We are alarmed to learn that over a dozen top criminals, who fled the country about two decades ago, are pulling the strings behind many criminal activities here. According to the law enforcers, these criminals – many of them now citizens of different countries – have links with tender grabbing at government offices and extorting businesspeople. Although their names often come up during criminal investigations, and police and Rab have been monitoring their activities for years now, they cannot be brought back home for trial due to a lack of information about their whereabouts. Unfortunately, it cannot even be proved that they are Bangladeshi criminals as their biometric data is not available to our law enforcers.

Shouldn't our police force have the efficiency and technological capacity to gather required information on these wanted criminals so that inefficiency or unavailability of information does not become an issue in identifying them in foreign lands?

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Two such notorious criminals are Jisan Ahmed and Jafar Ahmed Manik, whose involvement with two recent murders has again brought the issue to the fore. Reportedly, Jisan was accused in at least eight cases including six for murders, while Manik used to control the underworld of Motijheel. These criminals are among the 23 who are on the home ministry's list of top criminals. Other than them, there are many other top criminals who are also living abroad. According to an official of the Detective Branch of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, these criminals use sophisticated technology and call their targets using the phone numbers of a third country to extort money, making it difficult for the police to trace them.

Now the question is: what can our law enforcers do to overcome the challenges in bringing them back to the country? First of all, there needs to be better and regular coordination among police and the ministries concerned. Reportedly, in the absence of efficient coordination, some of the top criminals who were arrested abroad could not be brought back in the past. For instance, Jisan was arrested by the Interpol in 2019 in the UAE but could not be brought back home. The coordination issue must be solved once and for all.

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Dhaka underworld: Top criminals hold the reins from abroad

Then, it should not be so hard to bring back the criminals absconding in India, since Bangladesh and India have an extradition treaty according to which the Indian authorities can hand them over to their Bangladeshi counterparts. Why is that not happening yet? Furthermore, shouldn't our police force have the efficiency and technological capacity to gather required information on these wanted criminals so that inefficiency or unavailability of information does not become an issue in identifying them in foreign lands? Last but not the least, we should definitely take the help of the Interpol in extraditing these criminals to our country by giving them the required information.

All these issues mentioned above need to be addressed with priority if the authorities are sincere about bringing back these top criminals to the country and trying them as per the law.