People have lost trust in state institutions and in the elected office-bearers running the affairs of the country
LARKANA: The rape and murder of a minor girl in Kasur is reflective of the grave problems ailing our society. In one way, it is a sign of the moral decay seeping into society’s consciousness. It also exposes the bad governance and helplessness of our rulers for failing to put in place a mechanism for the protection of the child of a commoner.
Following the incident, a massive protest broke out in the city that received a disproportionate response from the police as a result of which two persons were killed. This is a grim reminder of the tactic that the Punjab police use while dealing with public protests. Whenever they flex their muscles to disperse a crowd, it results in the killing of civilians. This has been the case from Kasur to the Model Town incident in which 14 people were shot dead. However, the call ‘Justice for Zainab’ took many lives without earning the attention of our political leadership. Had the people of Kasur not come on the road calling for the arrest of the alleged killers, the case of Zainab like other 11 victims from Kasur would have ended up as another formality of an inquiry.
Justice is not only costly for the common man but also rarely dispensed to the less privileged. It is because of this realisation that the aggrieved families of Zainab and the two victims who lost their lives in the police shoot-out, appealed to the chief justice of Pakistan and the chief of the army staff for the redressal of their grievances. This shows that people have lost trust in state institutions and in the elected office-bearers running the affairs of the country.
Nazeer Ahmed Arijo
Published in The Express Tribune, January 20th, 2018.
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