A VIDEO clip of apparently police personnel dumping a body onto several other bodies onto a rickshaw van, said to have taken place on Dhaka鈥檚 outskirts of Ashulia, that has gone viral on social media warrants immediate government attention. It calls for an early investigation to establish whether the video clip is real or fake. The investigation would also need to establish what the incident was, who the people at play were, when it took place and whether it was related to the law enforcement unit鈥檚 killing towards the end of the student-mass uprising that many suspect it to be so. The proposition calls for an investigation even if it is not related to the killing that took place during the student protests. The video clip, said to have been made in the afternoon of August 5 after the deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country, shows a body was being thrown onto several bodies covered with a poster on the van. A few people in police gear were seen walking around. One of them is said to have been an inspector of the Detective Branch.
An early investigation of what the video clip shows constitutes gross violation of rights. The reason for the investigation is also pressing in view of what happened during the student-mass uprising of July-August in which, more than 650 people were killed, as the Office of the UN Commissioner for Human Rights says, in attacks first by the Awami League front people aided by various law enforcement units and later solely by law enforcers. Although the protests began with public university students first seeking the abolition of the civil service job reservations and later reforms in the process, after mid-July when the protests turned violent, students of private universities, colleges and schools and, finally, ordinary citizens joined in the protests that culminated into the overthrow of 15 years of authoritarian regime of the Awami League. If what the video clip shows is true, this is another glaring instance of rights violation and the 鈥榰se of lethal force鈥�, the UN Human Rights Office describes the events, of the Awami League government and its use of state agencies in its desperate effort to cling to power by quelling rightful protests. Even if the happening that the video clip has captured is not related to the student-mass uprising, the government should still carry out the investigation and act accordingly considering this to be a grave violation of rights by the law enforcement agency.
The interim government must, therefore, take up the issue seriously and run an investigation to establish what has happened. It must also establish the identity of the people who were dumped dead on the rickshaw van and the people, in police gear, who were dumping the bodies. It must take deterrent legal action, on a credible investigation, against the people behind the grotesque episode.