In their petition to the Bagerhat police superintendent, the seventeen UP chairmen claim that their lives are in such jeopardy that they have been forced to hide out in rented houses in the town of Bagerhat.

And these seventeen are apparently just the tip of the iceberg. Reportedly most of the seventy-five UP chairmen in the district have stopped going to office out of fear for their lives.

The reason given for this extraordinary state of events is that the UP chairmen feel that they are powerless to stand up to local gangsters and that they have received no protection from the police due to alleged collusion between the criminals and the law enforcers.

Now, it is important to bear in mind that these seventeen UP chairmen hiding out in Bagerhat town are influential and powerful leaders of the community at the local level. The question must be asked that if powerful local leaders are so fearful of hoodlums and bandits that they feel the need to take this kind of action, what recourse is there for the rest of us?

This kind of rampant criminality is nothing new. Nor is the collusion between criminals and the police that allows outlaws to operate with impunity.

We have written extensively within these pages about the law and order situation in Dhaka. Some Khilgaon police personnel are presently under investigation for extortion, and accounts of custodial torture and corruption at the Khilgaon thana as well as other police stations in the city have dominated the news and shocked the local population.

On Sunday came the news of Khulna police releasing three top listed criminals on Friday night two hours after they were arrested. This took place during the course of a massive anti-crime drive in the south-west and comes on the heels of news of a fresh crime spree hitting the region.

There is no great mystery behind the continuing decline in the law and order situation in the country. The reason that crime flourishes unchecked is that criminals enjoy political patronage.

It is an open secret that we will never be able to bring crime under control unless political patronage is withdrawn, and that crime could very easily be bought under control if the government were to crack down on politicians who protect and benefit from their criminal associates.

Of course the majority of our politicians do not patronise and protect criminals, and that politicians who do so are decidedly in the minority. So what prevents the majority from stepping up and taking action against those who are holding the nation's security hostage?

The reason is that the senior leadership of the ruling alliance perhaps has not yet given any green signal for the authorities to go after politicians whose patronage makes crime possible. Criminals will continue to operate with impunity until the senior leadership decides to make ending the collusion between politicians and gangsters a top priority.

Zafar Sobhan is an Assistant Editor of The Daily Star