WE really do not know what to say about the manner in which an innocent man, who passed 13 long years in Khulna jail on death row, died without seeing his family. The High Court declared Obaid innocent six months ago, by which time he was fighting a losing battle against colon cancer. Due to the excruciatingly slow pace with which our bureaucracy works, the paperwork for his release order only reached Khulna jail after six months, ironically, on the same day that Obaid died!

Obaid's case is a shoddy, horrendous example of the bureaucratic red-tape culture that has engulfed every facet of government. All he wanted was to spend his dying days in the company of his family, which he had been deprived of for 13 long years for a crime he did not commit. But then,Obaid is just another nameless ordinary citizen of this country for whom nothing but injustice was in store.

We wonder how many more such Obaids are languishing in the prison system, and like Obaid, their release orders may come too late. We hope that an inquiry into this sordid affair is launched to hold those responsible to account, because until we can establish accountability there will be no end to this state of affairs. The poor man was not able to die in peace surrounded by family. What could be more pathetic than that?