In one verdict the court has awarded death sentence for killing a woman; which was rather a whimsical run over by a truck driver in 2003 and the other verdict is a life term to a driver for killing three persons in a road accident in 2011 that included award winning Bangladeshi filmmaker Tareque Masud and TV producer Mishuk Munier.
It appears by all account that transport workers targeted the court verdict challenging the judiciary as they called for rescinding the verdicts. Their actions reinforce the belief that they have as if the right to kill people on the roads and highways. They resorted to vandalism to dictate the court. In our view the HC action has come at a right time and possibly it has prompted the strike to be withdrawn by yesterday afternoon.
Leaders of the Transport Workers Federation; which earlier denied to have called the strike, announced the withdrawal of the strike after a meeting with Shipping Minister Shajahan Khan, who is also a leader of Bangladesh Road Transport Workers’ Federation and State Minister for Labour Mujibur Rahman Chunnu. However the silence from both sides on what assurance workers agreed to withdraw the strike leaves many to believe that the ministers may have assured review of the sentence unwittingly making the court order vulnerable to bargain.
Transport workers strike has not only caused immense suffering to businesses and commuters, students appearing the SCC examinations suffered a lot. Reckless driving in the city caused the death to a female medical student only few days back who was due to become a full physician soon and such stories from all over the country are almost routinely capturing media headlines. It appears transport workers instead of bowing to the court verdict took to punish the people for the punishment that the judges gave to two errant drivers. The entire situation turned out to be totally chaotic partly being fuelled by a powerful minister with strong base in road transport workers to save the culprits adding to the government embarrassment.
The dismissal of the strike by Minister Shajahan Khan ‘as voluntary abstention of workers from work’ shows the complex politics that worked behind it and was mainly focused on waving the sentence.
Killing by reckless driving cannot go unpunished because they are bus and truck drivers. The killers are killers but car drivers have one advantage and that is they have the defence of mechanical disorder or pure accident without negligence. The government mishandled the situation by not explaining the judicial process in the right sense. It is the High Court Division that saved the people from sufferings.
