Glowing tributes paid to police martyrs

Day marks death anniversary of Additional IG Safwat Ghayyur

LAHORE: On Sunday, Police Martyrs Day was observed throughout Pakistan to pay homage to the police officers and officials who lost their lives in the line of duty.

The day is marked every year on August 4, the death anniversary of Commandant Frontier Constabulary Additional IG Safwat Ghayyur. Ghayyur was martyred in a suicide attack near his office in Peshawar in 2010.

Policing is a daring job. The officials have to face criminals as part of their routine duty. Causalities, injuries and mishaps often result when police confronted criminal elements. Hundreds of such incidents can be quoted.

The situation has been further aggravated after the war on terror. Thousands of innocents including security officials have lost lives in this war.

Police are a frontline force when it comes to the war on terror. It is the one a terrorist find standing in his way when he came to hit his target. It is the one that was the first responder after the attack. It is the one that would go after the bust terrorist network after the attack as part of investigations.

In Punjab alone, at least 1,500 policemen have sacrificed their lives including senior police officers - the rank of additional IG, DIG and SSPs.

Inspector General of Punjab Police Arif Nawaz in a statement regarding the day said that every soldier of police was ready to sacrifice his life for the protection of the public. “I felt proud for being the commander of a force that had 1500 martyrs,” he added. He also commented that they were taking well care of the welfare of the officials and their families.

To pay tribute to the martyrs, ceremonies, candlelight vigils, seminars, visit to graveyards were done on the day. On Saturday night, IG Arif Nawaz visited Yadgar-e-Shuhada at Mall Road. The next day, he joined a ceremony at Qila Gujjar Singh and Alhamra Hall. The officers also visited the houses of the martyred including DIG Mobeen Ahmad Shaheed.

These ceremonies were not confined to Lahore only but were conducted through Punjab and Pakistan.

#PoliceMartyrsDay remained the top trend on twitter also. The police officers and officials and the families of the martyrs expressed their strong resolve and commitment to make the county safe even if it costs them their lives.

However, a few critical voices were also observed. Senior journalist Arshad Sharif in a tweet highlighted the miseries of families of martyrs in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Pinning a cutting of news item of a national daily he wrote: “Shameful that even the families of #policemartyrs are betrayed with empty rhetoric & promises. A commission should be formed to identify & dismiss those from the jobs who betrayed families of brave sons of #Pakistan #PoliceMartyrsDay2019 #PoliceMartyrsDay”.

Another twitter handler Lubna Burki @lubna_aisha lashed out on a failure to nab the murderers of SP Tahir Dawar. She said, “Remembering the true son of #Pukhtunkhwa soil Tahir Dawar, who was picked from Islamabad and still haven't made an independent inquiry on his murder and abduction. Salute to #Tahirdawar & all police shuhada of kpk”.

Sexual harassment

Two horrifying incidents of sexual harassment were reported in the provincial capital this week. In both cases, the suspects had committed the offence of non-consensual indecent exposure. In a case, a suspect was found inappropriately touching himself while looking at girls.

The cases were reported using social media by the victims. In the first case reported on July 26, the suspect was identified as Arsalan Manzoor, a resident of Chung. In the second case, the culprit was identified as Tayyab Ahmed, a resident of Westwood Colony, Raiwind.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, August 5^th, 2019.