Is there no natural and in-built system for the police to register cases and apprehend criminals?
KARACHI: What do you do, if you are a poor person and your daughter, a maid in a rich man’s house, is found dead, hanging from a fan in mysterious circumstances that suggest possible rape and murder instead of a suicide? What do you do, if you are a poor villager and your daughter is gunned down in broad daylight by a local influential person in the home constituency of the chief minister reportedly over refusal of a marriage proposal?
Should the police not automatically register these cases and apprehend the criminals. Sadly, the police will neither register a case nor investigate the matter. The law is meant to protect the families of the rich and the powerful and not to apprehend them.
So you collect all your relatives and friends and protest outside the police station demanding the registration of the case. But this is not good enough. Next, you take your already grief stricken families to the press club and wail and plead in front of the cameras and reporters to ask the rulers to provide justice.
When the protest pictures appear in the newspapers, the police are forced to register a case — at least on paper — so that it could be a permanent burial in the dusty files of a record room.
Is there no natural and in-built system for the police to register cases and apprehend criminals even when there are no protests or pressures from the aggrieved family? A murder is a crime against the state and the state must come to the aid of its citizens. Will the IG Sindh please institutionalise the process of FIRs and not force the victims’ families to conduct protests, ‘dharnas’ and hunger strikes to obtain their fundamental right to life.
Naeem Sadiq
Published in The Express Tribune, September 19th, 2017.
Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.
