Maisha’s day out, our exuberant police and the ‘Men in Black’

Maisha's Day Out
Those who have watched the movie "Baby's Day Out" must recollect the similarities and dissimilarities between the storyline of the movie and the recent sensational abduction of the eight-month-old infant named Maisha.

Five robbers robbed Maisha's house in Khilgaon, Dhaka and at the end of robbery they snatched Maisha from her mother's lap and took her away with them. They left ransom demands while fleeing with Maisha.

In 'Baby's Day Out', three criminals abduct the baby of a rich man with the hope of a large ransom. But the little mischievous one, almost the same age that of Maisha, gives the three kidnappers, all men and not used to taking care of a baby, a run for their money. We don't know what transpired between Maisha and her kidnappers ever since she was snatched away from her mother's lap, but we can easily assume that the robbers/kidnappers did not have much luck with baby Maisha either. It probably was the longest night for the kidnappers. Probably all of the robbers were up all night dealing with a crying Maisha. New feeding bottle was purchased to feed her, etc.

So no sooner had there were morning rays and the robbers found a suitable spot to drop the baby off, they were in all likelihood relieved to get rid of the crying infant, and Maisha was out in the street waiting for someone to sport her. The robber/ kidnappers had to be ingenious in finding a way to send a message with Maisha. Leaving a piece of paper in Maisha's hand was out of the question. She would either eat it or throw it away. So the robbers came up with a unique idea of buying a white T-shirt, write the message on it and put the T-shirt on Maisha!

The ending of the story was a happy one. Although unlike the movie "Baby's Day Out", Maisha's kidnappers were not apprehended, she was back on her mother's lap.

Maisha made a lot of people in Bangladesh smile. Her parents smiled on getting her back, Bangladesh police smiled to be finally able to claim that they had an operational victory after a secret tip off and people in Bangladesh smiled to finally be able to see a semi-positive news and a cute baby's face on TV.

Maisha is indeed an adorable baby. It is difficult not to love such a cute one. As seen on TV, along with the parents of Maisha, Bangladesh police officials looked very elated. Smile could not fit their faces. Although they had nothing to do in getting Maisha back, the police were all in arms to claim it as their major operational victory. It was funny how Mirpur Thana police chief told the media that he rescued Maisha based on a secret tip off! The fact is the kidnappers wrote the mobile phone number of a relative of Maisha on the T-shirt they put on her. The person who found Maisha called that number — Maisha's family notified the police and Maisha was rescued.

The exuberant police
But I would not blame Bangladesh police for being over-exuberant about Maisha's rescue. Things are really bad for police in Bangladesh these days. No one seems to count on them anymore. They can hardly solve any crime, and more sadly no one really expects them to. Even the high court of the country subjected Bangladesh Police department to big time public rebuke for their failure to solve several crimes and at least in one instance took a case away from them and handed it over to the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), also known as Bangladesh's 'Men in Black'.

And more humiliatingly for Bangladesh police, nowadays they are not even considered as possible suspects for some major crimes either. Robbery, bribery, drug implanting, abduction-extortion, extra judicial killing, disappearance — all of which used to be 'monopoly' of the 'police underworld', seems to have become the RAB's 'expertise'.

And The Men in Black
In our previous piece on alien invasion of Bangladesh, one reader asked where are our 'Men in Black', who would fight the aliens. In a Hollywood movie with the same title, "Men in Black" are Special Forces created and trained to fight the alien invasion of New York City. In Bangladesh, we too have our very own 'Men in Black'. With their black attire and bandana, our elite force 'Rapid Action Battalion' (RAB) members surely act as our 'Men in Black'.  But there is a twist.

The twist is that, the alien experts in Bangladesh have started suspecting that rather than being the alien fighters, our "Men in Black" are either alien themselves or they have been joined the alien empire and are carrying out criminal activities e.g. killings, abductions, etc. on behalf of the extra-terrestrial creatures.

The moral of the story
I don't have the exact English substitute for the Bengali idiom, "Bonneyra Boney Shundor, Shishura Matree Krore" (Every creature deserves to be in their natural habitat, as the child belongs to her mother's lap and the flora fauna belongs to the wilderness). Little Baby Maisha proved she belonged to her mother's lap and her captors could not defy that rule of nature. Similarly, the police force is supposed to be the domestic law enforcement authority. That is the basic call of the civilisation we live in. When we try to break this rule by bringing in elite forces carrying out domestic law enforcement roles, we defy one of the basic tenets of our civilisation.

As a result police becomes irrelevant, alien busters become alien agents themselves.

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Rumi Ahmed, a blogger and rights activist writes from Florida, USA.