Within the moral bounds

The police across the country are rather infamous and notorious for all the reasons they shouldn’t be engaging or involved in. Indifferent to innumerable ills of society, the police have now taken up the task of moral policing to themselves.

Not only do the police here fail to protect citizens in times of need but often is the one causing distress or trouble for the public out there.

Earlier this week, a video of police officials harassing a couple at Karachi Sea View beach made rounds on social media. The situation kicked off with a policeman on a bike demanding the Nikahnama of the couple and upon the couple’s dismissal, the official manhandled them.

Since the coming of the PTI government, police reforms are now much under debate, however, with so much being planned and said on how to improve the institution, the police also need to have a ‘moral reform’.

It is the foremost institution of law-enforcement and order-keeping that an ordinary citizen gets in to interact with, yet such incidents only tend to form an ill perception of the force. As seen earlier, dismissals and suspensions have proven to be less than useful to keep police within their own ‘moral’ bounds.

Often acting at the whims of political influence, police force at least at the district level is far from rigorous accountability of its action. It is high time that the most ill-reputed and least trusted of the public servers were dealt with for their wrongdoings. Harassing citizens is no less of an important issue not to be undertaken when working out the police reforms.

Police’s image can only be improved if their performance is improved — performance with regard to what it is ought to do as protector and server to the public.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 15^th, 2019.

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