There is no gentler way to say this: mobs are not afraid of this government either.
On February 18, Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed declared, “This is the end of mob culture.” The statement was bold, and long overdue. After months in which mob violence had become alarmingly routine, it offered a sense of relief, even hope, that the state was finally ready to reclaim authority from the streets.
That hope was short-lived.
On April 10, a mob in Dhaka's Shahbagh attacked a group of friends near the National Museum, after branding them “homosexuals”, “transgender”, or “hijra”. The next day, another mob hacked a pir named Abdur Rahman -- also known as Shamim al-Jahangir -- to death in Kushtia. Two days, two attacks, and two brutal reminders of how quickly a minister’s promise unravelled.
The Kushtia killing was not simply savage. It was damning. Shamim was beaten and hacked to death at his darbar over allegations of hurting religious sentiments. His darbar was vandalised and set on fire. This was not a clash. It was not a momentary loss of control. It was a mob deciding that accusation was enough, outrage was enough, and the law could come later, if it came at all.
Reports indicated that police knew in the morning that inflammatory videos about the pir were circulating. Yet when the mob came, the man was still hacked to death. Later came the explanation that police were too few in number. That may describe the failure, but does not excuse it. If law enforcers have warning, have presence, and still cannot stop a man from being killed, that is not a lapse. It is collapse of authority in broad daylight.
Shahbagh exposed the same failure in a different way. There, the target was not belief but identity. In one of the country’s most prominent public spaces, a crowd assumed the power to decide who could be there without facing harassment or violence. Shahbagh is not some remote corner beyond the law’s reach. To attack people there is to act on the belief that the state will hesitate.
If Kushtia showed a mob policing belief, Shahbagh showed a mob policing identity. Different targets, same arrogance. The crowd first assumes moral authority. It then appoints itself investigator, prosecutor, and judge. In Kushtia, it went further and became executioner. By the time the law arrives, the verdict has already been delivered.
On March 24, in Biswanath, Sylhet, more than a hundred people reportedly attacked and vandalised the venue of a Baul music gathering near a shrine, damaging the stage, instruments, sound system, and chairs before threatening tougher action if such events were held again. That attack mattered not only because property was destroyed, but because it targeted a space, a tradition, and the idea of a more plural Bangladesh.
Then there is the March 7 case involving Dhaka University students Sheikh Tasnim Afroz Emi, Abdullah Al Mamun, and Md Asif Ahmed Shoikot. They gathered in front of Shahbagh Police Station to protest a police detention. They were obstructed by rivals, forcibly taken inside the police station, and ended up behind bars themselves. When citizens are assaulted or overpowered by a crowd and the state’s response is to jail those at the receiving end of that violence, the line between law and intimidation begins to dissolve.
These are not isolated incidents. A recent HRSS report, cited by The Daily Star, said at least 49 people were killed in 88 mob-related incidents in the first three months of 2026. Another HRSS-based report said March alone saw 25 mob attacks, leaving 13 people dead and 38 injured. Shahbagh and Kushtia were simply the cases that made the wider disease impossible to ignore.
The government has not simply failed to prevent a series of attacks. By repeatedly declaring the end of mob violence while allowing it to continue, it has taught mobs a dangerous lesson: warnings do not always lead to consequences. Violent men watch what follows violence. When arrests are weak, prosecutions drag on, and punishment remains absent from public view, the message is quickly understood. The state hesitates. The street remains up for grabs.
And the warnings kept coming. Salahuddin Ahmed spoke, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir spoke, Zahir Uddin Swapan spoke against the mob on different occasions. After Shahbagh and Kushtia, Dr Zahed Ur Rahman spoke too, again invoking zero tolerance and insisting that the power to enforce the law belongs to the state alone. The problem was never the absence of official words. It was the absence of official fear in the minds of those who needed it most.
Condemnation without consequence is not governance. It is performance.
What is needed now is not another statement. It is visible force of law. Immediate arrests. Sustained prosecution. Exemplary punishment. And that accountability cannot stop with the mobs. It must also reach the law enforcers who delay, hesitate, look away, or first try to calculate who the attackers are before deciding whether to act. The message to police must be unmistakable: when a mob forms, intervene. Protect the victim. Break the crowd. Arrest the attackers. Enforce the law.
That calculation exists because, too often, there is something to calculate: a political affiliation, a patron, a signal from above. Until that changes, no instruction to the police will be enough.
This government has already found the language. What it has not yet found is the force to make that language matter.
The writer is a journalist at The Daily Star who writes on education, with a broader interest in governance, human rights, and public accountability. He can be reached at [email protected].
