Extra-judicial killing is a crime in itself under the law of the land
KARACHI: Extra-judicial killings in Karachi are seemingly as old as crime itself is in the city. The police on numerous accounts have been unable in producing the culprit in court with proper evidences. As a result, failing to allow them the legal process which is their due right under the law. Extra-judicial killing, that is, killing the suspect at the crime scene without being presented in court is vastly practised by the police, in most of the cases the suspect is deliberately shot down in a rather staged encounter. It happened only recently in Karachi in the vicinity of PECHS where three suspects of dacoity were allegedly gunned down despite the fact that the police failed to produce any weapon at the crime scene, yet the three were killed on the spot under the cover of armed resistance.
Extra-judicial killing is a crime in itself under the law of the land, however, the only difference is that the perpetrator of the crime is the one responsible to counter and control it. Whereas producing the convict in court might be no less risky at times particularly when the crime is too heinous, such killings only perpetrate violence. Amendments to the Anti-terrorism Act (1997) were meant to give the law-enforcing forces a better grip at dealing with crime control, nevertheless it has been equally misused by the said authorities, Sarfaraz Shah case (2011) is one among dozens of such cases, where innocents are killed in a mere display of power abuse.
Rida Ishaq
Published in The Express Tribune, August 16th, 2017.
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