FIA misconduct

Those tasked with upholding the law cannot be seen violating it. This is not a complicated principle. It does not require legal training to grasp, nor institutional wisdom to apply. And yet FIA's operation at Karachi's Sarafa Bazaar on May 15 during which officials raided a jewellery shop and manhandled, even slapped, the owner in front of his young son has become the latest reminder that Pakistan's law enforcement machinery continues to struggle with the most basic obligation of professional conduct. Whatever silver smuggling the raid was meant to uncover, what the public saw were allegations of excessive force and abuse of authority by officials who arrived with the power of the state behind them.

That the FIA has since suspended one officer, transferred another and initiated a departmental inquiry suggests the institution understands something went wrong. It does not yet suggest the institution understands why this keeps happening. What almost never follows is a serious reckoning with the institutional culture that makes such incidents not just possible but recurring. Public trust in law enforcement determines whether communities see enforcement agencies as protectors or predators. Pakistan already carries a significant deficit on this count. The FIA has stated that abuse of authority will not be tolerated under any circumstances. We have heard variations of that sentence before. The statement is not wrong. It is simply insufficient on its own.

What is needed from the inquiry into this incident is not a verdict, but a willingness to examine the institutional culture that shapes how officials conduct themselves in the field. If the FIA is serious about the words it put on record, it will treat this episode as a diagnostic rather than a crisis to be managed. Professionalism in law enforcement is not measured by whether officers, in the exercise of considerable power, remember that the law they enforce also applies to them.