Thieves or 'choras' of Bangladesh

The very mention of the word 'thief' brings to the mind the 1940s' popular movie 'The Thief of Baghdad'. In Bengalee communities, thieves are considered petty delinquents. In most cases, they are set free after a good beating. These thieves then roam about, with their heads down. Many elders call them shameless. Their mothers' outright denial of the fact that their sons are thieves (`chores' in Bangla) has given rise to the famous idiom` Chorermayerborhogola', meaning the mothers of thieves yell at people who call their sons thieves. In the rural areas of Bangladesh, petty thieves are viewed with a mixture of indulgence, and, of course, alertness. However, if the crime is centred round stealing of trifling household objects, like cooking pots, or a low-height wooden stool (pirhi), and a kind housewife catches the thief red-handed, what awaits him is a barrage of rebukes. He is, also, not spared a 'stern' warning. On a hot summer noon much later, the innocent housewife brings a glass of water, goes inside the house letting the presumably repentant 'chora' sit in the shaded cool veranda. When she returns after a while to take the glass back, the thief is gone! So is the glass. Similar episodes happen to recur with others. Perhaps this behavioural pattern of village thieves has given rise to another Bangla idiom, "choranashoneydhormerkahini". It means "A thief never shows interest in moral lessons." 

However, the Bengal villages once considered incomplete without four kinds of people. They are a dimwit, a buffoon, an exorcist --- and a petty thief. With the changes in times, man no longer wants to allow these 'pests' to live with them. Moreover, their brutal face could be seen as the frenzied people swarms on a fleeing, panic-stricken thief. The beatings at times become so merciless and savage, the thieves --- begging for life and promising they will leave the village for good, faint out on the spot. 

But there is also another side of the coin. Thieves are also changing their crime patterns. They are no longer traditional thieves in the Bangladesh cities, especially in Dhaka and other urban areas. Like the muggers, they also appear to be not content with beating a retreat on being caught. In a fierce gesture, they try to flee the scene of crime, at times brandishing small firearms or knives. The thieves of Dhaka nowadays apply this technique. Unlike in the villages, it's difficult to catch a thief in the capital. The thieves in Dhaka leave no scopes for being looked down upon. Of course, when a person is referred to as a thief, people in the cities visualise a skulking or a surreptitiously moving person. In the capital, they are mostly well-dressed. Their areas of operation range from buses, crowded places to shopping areas etc. Anyone who falls victim to thieves blame the invisible muggers for the crime. As is widely believed, thieves love to commit their acts employing their newly innovated techniques so that they can't be detected. Given their latest annoyance, many people have started to remain alert while on a bus. A new development in stealing at public places or on transports: when attacked by a mob, they swoop on the people with similar frenzy. Like pickpockets or muggers on the run, the thieves do not hesitate to injure the victims with small lethal weapons. 

The law enforcing agencies have always avoided the thieves as a stinking pest. Unless those are burglary cases, the law enforcers would deal with them by meting out negligible punishments to them. Of late the police authorities have started taking the theft cases quite seriously. According to a recent data, the police have found the number of Dhaka thieves at 3,610. Many sufferers presume the number to be much higher. 

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