According to media reports eight alleged robbers were killed and four others injured in a lynch-mob attack in Araihazar upazila of Narayanganj district early Thursday during their bid to “loot a rice godown”. Some of the people of the gang who could escape the fury of the murderous mob later confessed to the police that they indeed planned to carry out the robbery.

However does this justify people taking the law into their hands and lynching these people? While we cannot support mob lynching under any circumstances we have to try and understand people of the locality felt it necessary to capture the alleged criminals and dispense their form of instant ‘justice’. They had a choice before them and instead of reporting to the police they chose to sort the matter out themselves. Quite clearly trust in the law enforcers is low and the trend of vigilante justice is becoming increasingly  common.
Earlier this year eight alleged dacoits were killed by a mob in Ashulia and just a couple of months back several presumed dacoits were beaten to death in Brahmanbaria.  There is an urgent need on the part of  law enforcers to pull up their socks so that trust on them is ensured. However for that to happen institutional reforms are necessary and political pressure on these forces must end. It is also the responsibility of the leaders of  society to educate the people about the fact that the rule of law is sacrosanct and vigilante justice is no justice at all.
As stated earlier vigilantism is usually associated with a loss of faith in the criminal justice system. At the same time, the temptation to take the law into one’s own hand is much greater when people believe they can get
away by playing vigilantes. This is why it is extremely important for the authorities to take a hard line against all kinds of violent vigilantism, paying particular attention to those cases where the punishment meted out is bloody and harsh.
Vigilantism is often the handiwork of an unthinking and angry mob, which fails to understand that the revenge it extracts is not just unlawful but is more often than not also grossly disproportionate to the crime. In the long run, there are a host of social factors that need to be addressed in order to reduce vigilantism and restore public faith in the criminal justice system. At the immediate level, however, it is important to see the phenomenon for what it is — a criminal activity — and put it down firmly.