BANGLADESH

Using auto-rickshaws or taxicabs for mugging is passé. More and more assailants these days use stolen cars, say police and two such miscreants  spoke with.

About the slight change in modus operandi, this mugger 'Siddique' (name changed on request to protect identity) told : "The possibility of getting caught increases if we use auto-rickshaws or taxicabs. The police now keep a sharp eye on these vehicles. Besides, their numbers have also decreased."

According to him, they first steal a car or a motorcycle and then use it to zoom in on victims and forcibly take away valuables from them.

Detective Branch (DB) of police's Dhaka metropolitan deputy commissioner (south) Mohammad Monirul Islam also said such offenders usually use stolen motorcycles.

Siddique said it also makes sense to abandon the stolen vehicle and flee after mugging, he added.

EASY BAIL, BACK TO 'BASICS'

While most such snatching and mugging cases are not solved, thanks largely to indifference shown by the victims for recovery of the robbed items, lack of enforcement also comes in the way of police in strictly dealing with these assailants.

Noor-e-Alam Habu, a mugger, told : "I was held in such cases on several occasions but was freed after serving four or five months in jail."

He said the syndicates "deal with" the police and have particular lawyers to try such cases.

Asked why he returns to the same job after being freed on bail, Habu said, "I have no other means to fall back on. My bosses are Tunda Masud and Nazrul Islam Gira. And though I've never seen them and only execute orders I receive over phone, their men will kill me if I want to leave this line."

He said on more than one occasion he tried to mend his ways and become a "good person". "But couldn't," he added.

DB officer Monirul also said, "The hijackers and carjackers return to the same job after bail. We do not get permission even to grill them (thoroughly). As a result, a single person is held several times."

Lawyers, however, blame the police for the bails hijackers get.

Mahbub Hasan Rana, a lawyer in Dhaka District Judges' Court, said: "Carjacking is a non-bailable offence in line with Section 379 of the Penal Code. But the accused get bail for weaknesses in remand petitions filed by the police, apart from secret deals (struck with the syndicates)."
He said the police should be more active to investigate and make reports in such cases.

The Election Commission is undertaking a pilot project to gather polls results from poling centres through sms.

Election commissioner Sohul Hossain said on Tuesday the experimental project will be applied at the Narshingdi mayor by-elections.

Lutful Kabir from BUET Institute of Information and Technology said they had developed a software that would work in three steps to collect and calculate the result.

In the first step, the assistant presiding officer will SMS the results of their centre to the office of the returning officer.

The central database placed there will then send another text to the assistant presiding officer asking for confirmation of the result.

Once the result is confirmed through a third SMS, it will be stored in the database and added up.

Sohul said if the pilot project succeeded, the commission would consider applying it to bigger elections.

Lutful Kabir said EVMs can spell out polls results immediately.

"But summing up the results from individual centres takes a lot of time. The SMS system will help us calculate the results much more quickly," he said.

Ferry operations resumed at Mawa-Kewrakandi crossing on Wednesday morning after heavy fog disrupted the service for three hours.

Manager of Bangladesh Inland Water Transportation Corporation's Mawa terminal Sirajul Islam told  ferry services were halted from around 6:30am as heavy fog disrupted visibility.

Seven ferries with over 2,000 passengers on board were stranded in the middle of the Padma River, he said.

The halt in ferry operations saw large traffic gridlocks on both sides of the crossing, Islam said.

Services resumed around 9:40am when fog started to ease, he added.

The war crimes tribunal has adjourned witness testimony and cross-examination in Jamaat leader Delwar Hossain Sayedee's case to Tuesday (Jan 24).

The International War Crimes Tribunal gave the order as the prosecution said its 15th witness, Madhushudan Gharami, a man of 80, was still not physically well enough to testify.

Prosecutor Rana Das Gupta told the court that they could not produce the witness since he was not well after having travelled a long way.

The tribunal, set up to try crimes against humanity during the 1971 Liberation War, has indicted the Jamaat executive council member Sayedee on 20 counts of war crimes, including murder, rape, arson and loot.

The tribunal also deferred its ruling on taking charges against Jamaat assistant secretary general Mohammad Kamaruzzaman.

Nizamul Huq said that the tribunal had not been able finish reading all the documents to able it to give an order regarding cognisance of the charges.

Sayedee's is the first case to proceed to trial at the tribunal. The prosecution on Sept 4, 2011, proposed the framing of charges against Sayedee on 31 counts for crimes against humanity and genocide in the first case of the tribunal. The tribunal indicted Sayedee on 20 counts on Oct 3.

The tribunal also ordered Jamaat's guru, and a former party chief, Ghulam Azam to jail on Jan 11. His indictment hearing, as well as that of the current Jamaat chief Matiur Rahman Nizami, has been scheduled for Feb 15.

Apart from Sayedee, Jamaat chief Matiur Rahman Nizami, secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed and assistant secretaries general Mohammad Kamaruzzaman and Abdul Quader Molla, and Bangladesh Nationalist Party's standing committee member Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, also a lawmaker, have been detained, along with others, on charges of war crimes.

The tribunal, however, on March 31 last year, granted conditional bail to former BNP MP and minister Abdul Alim. The bail was extended further on Jan 16 ordering him to be present in the court on Mar 15, when the prosecution has been directed to submit formal charges against the BNP leader.

The prime minister has once again warned doctors of serious consequences if they do not report for duty regularly at their rural assignments.

"All physicians must be present at their places of work to serve the people, otherwise stern action will be taken," Sheikh Hasina on Tuesday once repeated the warning that she has dropped at various doctors' gatherings.

She was inaugurating the newly-constructed academic building of Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital in the capital.

When  sought to know from a doctors' leader whether the warning had any impact, a flat "no" was his response.

"You can create immediate panic (among doctors), but it's not the solution," said former president of Bangladesh Medical Association Rashid-e-Mahbub, and added: "This is kind of rhetoric to cover up own failure (sic)."

He, however, declined to elaborate on 'failure'.

Despite prime minister's repeated warning, state minister for health Mojibur Rahman Fakir, in a surprise visit, on Jan 7 found 19 doctors absent from their duties at Bhaluka Upazila Health Complex and Gouripur Upazila Health Complex under his own constituency.

He instructed the health secretary to initiate action.

"Besides, being at the workplace is one thing and serving people is another. It's a very different profession (medical). You cannot serve, if you don't have commitment," he said.

"If they (government) really want to change the situation, they will have to overhaul the whole management," Mahbub said throwing a poser: "Do they (doctors) get any incentive for staying at a remote place? Is there a proper system in place that can make them stay there?"

"You can post as many specialists you want in an upazila hospital, but they won't stay there if they don't have proper work-related facilities," he went on.

Mahbub suggested local-level recruitment of doctors, not from far-off places. "If you recruit doctors from Sylhet division, they won't be able to come to Dhaka," he said.

During East Pakistan days, there used to be only one director in the health sector and the number of doctors was around 250, he pointed out.

"But now you see 250 doctors in an upazilla now, yet all being monitored by the central administration," he said.

The prime minister in her speech on Tuesday was categorical: "Doctors, who are posted in the rural areas, will have to go there with their family, and there is no way to avoid the arrangement."

She said her government has been working tirelessly to take healthcare services to the doorsteps of people.

"It is people who will decide who would stay in power. Our responsibility is towards them…to serve them," she said.

Following trading suspension on Tuesday, trading on Wednesday started half an hour behind schedule.

The benchmark index of the country's premier bourse experienced a precipitous fall at opening.

The Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) general index plummeted 151.25 points, or 3.10 percent, to stand at 4713.04 points at 12:06pm.

Shares worth Tk 843.85 million changed hands until then, with losers heavily outnumbering gainers 213 to 11. Seven issues remained unchanged.

Meanwhile, retail investors are demonstrating in front of the DSE from 11am demanding suspension of trading in the capital market until it stabilises.

They are chanting slogans demanding resignation of the prime minister and the Bangladesh Bank governor.

Traffic on the street in front of the DSE has been halted for the demonstration.

'CONFUSION AND SUSPENSION'

After a day's of suspension, trading at the DSE resumed half an hour behind schedule on Wednesday.

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman M Khairul Hossain on Wednesday told reporters that business would resume at 11:30am.

Fear of a negative impact on the capital market brought about by the 'confusion' over investment in the stocks by public servants forced authorities to suspend trading in the twin bourses on Tuesday.

The DSE board had said the decision to stop Tuesday's trading was taken in the 'interest of the investors' after two weeks of a bearish trend. The board sat for an emergency meeting at 10am and the decision to suspend trading came immediately afterwards.

Trading on Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) was also suspended around five minutes after the start on Tuesday.

After the meeting, Mosharraf Hossain, chief executive officer of the DSE, said on Tuesday the suspension order was issued as the confusion over investment could impact the market negatively.

He said the order was intended to avoid any further confusion.

"A bewilderment was noticed in news reports on investment in capital market by government officials (civil and military). DSE authorities think this might create confusion among the investors and impact the capital market negatively," Mosharraf Hossain said on Tuesday.

"So, trading has been halted in the interest of the share market and the investors," he added.

The cabinet on Monday cleared a proposal to amend the income tax law to reduce income tax on investments. Abul Kalam Azad, the press secretary to prime minister Sheikh Hasina, later said, "We know the capital market is risky. It is inappropriate for those in government service to engage in such business."

The comments created confusion as to whether the government was trying to prevent state officials from investing.

Later Azad told  that he had made and 'off the record' remark about the government officials and employees investing in the market and that there was a misunderstanding among journalists on the matter.

The law in force stipulates that public servants cannot be involved with any other profitable ventures, but they have been investing in the capital market thanks to legal loopholes.