Supreme Court may take suo-motu notice of the recent incident in which 50 goats were killed as policemen took revenge
KARACHI: I would like to call to attention the prevalence of police brutality and acts of violence in Pakistan. In particular, I would like to request the Supreme Court to take suo-motu notice of the recent incident in which 50 goats were killed as policemen took revenge for the high prices they were being charged for these. A police constable in Sasta Bazaar near Service Mor of Gujrat had become angry with a cattle owner over high prices of the goats he was selling. The constable led the goats on to a railway track where they were crushed to death under the wheels of the train running from Rawalpindi to Lahore. Approximately 30 goats were also injured in the incident
Last year, in another case of police brutality, the police opened fire killing 11 political workers and injuring over 60 after the latter resisted the removal of barricades in an anti-encroachment operation in front of the Minhajul Quran Secretariat in June of last year in Lahore. Punjab seems to have become a police state where there have been reports of people being killed in the name of fake encounters by the police and now, it is also killing innocent animals. The Supreme Court should take suo-motu notice of this incident and hear the case urgently because it seems as if there is no rule of law in the country and that policemen think they can kill anyone. I request the Court to tell the police to treat the incident as an act of terrorism and file an FIR under the Anti-Terrorism Act. Pakistan is a poor country, where the majority of its population finds it hard to make ends meet. It is the responsibility of the government to compensate the traders for their losses. The culprit has been identified and now, it is the responsibility of the government to bring the officers and their accomplices to justice.
Ghazanfar Ali Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, October 4th, 2015.
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