Shariful Islam

It was a robbery that caused quite a sensation in Manikganj almost 15 years ago.

A gang of masked robbers stormed the house of one Habibur Rahman in Sidhunagar of Ghior upazila around 15 minutes past midnight on June 30, 2006. He and some of his family members were watching a World Cup football match at the time.

The robbers shot Habibur, killing him on the spot and wounded four others before making away with Tk 2.31 lakh in cash, gold ornaments, and other valuables from the house.

Moktar Hossain, Habibur’s brother, filed a case with Ghior Police Station against 15 to 16 unidentified robbers the next day.

Eleven years later, a Manikganj court acquitted all the charge-sheeted accused in the case.

The Additional District and Sessions Judge’s Court in its verdict delivered on April 18, 2017 observed that sloppy investigation and a faulty charge sheet were among the reasons behind acquittals of the accused.

This is not the only incident of such sloppiness in case investigations.

The majority of the offenders go unpunished and move freely largely due to the absence of witnesses or contradictory testimonies given before courts, sloppy investigation, and improper recording of confessional statements, according to legal experts and senior law enforcement officials.

Khurshid Alam Khan, a criminal law expert, said he thinks between 70 to 75 percent of robbery cases see no conviction.

This is backed by a report of the Police Bureau of Investigation (PBI), which found an alarming 77.33 percent of robbery cases ended up with no conviction between 2016 and 2017.

The incident in Ghior is a perfect case in point.

The complainant mentioned the number of robbers in the case statement around 15 to 16. But the investigation officer (IO) submitted a charge sheet against 31 people, which the court found to be unbelievable.

The court said such a large number of people would not go to commit a robbery in a neighbourhood.