Dhaka, Oct. 18 -- The gruesome torture and killing of Buet student Abrar Fahad on the night of October 6, inside the institute's Sher-e-Bangla Hall, always leant the impression of being unlike any other instance of violence perpetrated by the Bangladesh Chhatra League over the last ten years. Perhaps it was Abrar's intelligence and eloquence, his independent mind, the dream he was so capably chasing at the country's premier institute of learning, that made it so. Or it may have been the incredulous details of what went on that night, the telling CCTV footage that pieced together a story that would otherwise have been unthinkable. Only later did we learn it was in fact all too common, if not always with such tragic consequences.

It may ha...