Where are police reforms?

We now have a Naya Pakistan, but our policemen are as undisciplined, brutal, insensitive, incompetent as before

We now have a Naya Pakistan, but our policemen are as undisciplined, brutal, insensitive, corrupt, incompetent — and politicised — as in the Purana Pakistan. Well, there may be a few — or more — exceptions both among the officers and the rank and file, but collectively the police force is not even a blurred shadow of what it is meant to be i.e. an efficient, trained, trusted and friendly custodian of the public. The general perception that the police patronise crime, abuse their authority, run private torture cells, are unhelpful and rude with the people, and only serve the powerful is not far from reality.

For those who see a blanket statement having been passed above should revisit a few recent incidents of crime and examine the police response and their behaviour. A woman is gang-raped in front of her two minor children on the motorway near Lahore on September 9, and the police come to her rescue no later than 52 minutes of being informed of the offence even though the crime scene is a few kilometers from the toll plaza. What adds insult to the injury is the victim-blaming by none other than the Lahore city police chief, and the insensitive remarks not even been condemned in clear terms officially by a government spokesperson.

The Sahiwal shooting, in January 2019, is also a case point. The incident involves an innocent couple — as well as their teenage daughter and a neighbour — being killed in front of their three minor children in an alleged police encounter on a highway near Sahiwal. The victims, it was later turned out, were neither abductors nor terrorists — as claimed by the counter-terrorism police in defence of their brutal action — and were travelling to Burewala from Lahore to attend a family wedding. Two of the three minor children also sustained gunshots.

Also fresh in painful memories is the custodial killing, in September 2019, of Salahuddin Ayubi, a mentally challenged man who was arrested by the police in Rahim Yar Khan after his video of breaking open an ATM, making faces and sticking his tongue out at the CCTV camera went viral on social media. Even though Ayubi had his name and address tattooed on his arms for identification, it was no indication for the police that he may not have been normal. The police tortured the “shrewd robber” to death while trying to extract “important” information from him about his perceived gang.

While this colonial mindset of the police — which forces them to treat the public with utter disregard — prevails even to this day, no serious effort has been made by the successive governments to remodel the force to turn it into a genuinely autonomous and disciplined organisation free from political interference. The PTI, in particular, has turned out to be a big disappointment. Depoliticisation of police as part of broader reforms had been one of the much-trumpeted pledges made by Imran Khan when in the opposition. However, on assuming power, he has failed to bring an iota of change as to the functioning of the police force. Frequent changes at the helm of the police in Punjab and Islamabad not only point towards political interference but only show that Khan has no clue on how to go about reforming the police.

The strong criticism of the state of affairs of police by the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Justice Gulzar Ahmed, the other day is an indictment of the government’s failure over its claims of a reformed and depolitised police. In the words of the honourable top judge “the government needs to wake up and immediately restore the credibility of the police department …”

 

Published in The Express Tribune, Septe0mber 13^th, 2020.

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