Karachi violence: Judgement day today as Sindh govt, police in the dock

Did the administration and force follow the Supreme Court’s recommendations for stemming the tide of blood?.

KARACHI:

The Sindh government, police and rangers have had a year to swallow the bitter prescription from the Supreme Court to clean up Karachi. Today, they will have to answer for their performance.

The SC is scheduled to take up today the case that stems from suo motu proceedings started by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry after he read the horrifying newspaper reports on August 22 last year. This was when the city went through one of its bloodiest summers. Five judges held lengthy hearings in Karachi, reserved their order on September 16 and announced it in Islamabad on October 6, 2011. The recommendations were clear and detailed on what they had to do.

Justices Anwar Zaheer Jamali, Khilji Arif Hussain, Sarmad Jalal Osmany, Amir Hani Muslim and Gulzar Ahmed will now hear answers from the province’s top brass, from the home secretary to the Rangers director-general, who have been summoned today.

Sindh High Court Chief Justice Mushir Alam supervised the monthly follow-ups and a review committee’s sealed report has been given to the SC, The Express Tribune has learnt. It appears that the report card is going to be disappointing.

“The Rangers DG used to submit ‘traditional’ reports while the police chief verbally complained that unnecessary political interference was a hurdle in the implementation of the orders,” sources said.

Indeed, the SHC CJ had repeatedly spoken about the lack of cooperation from the Sindh government to enforce the writ of the Supreme Court.

The SC has also issued notices to the Attorney General of Pakistan, Advocate General of Sindh, chief secretary, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association and president of the SHC Bar Association.

For its part, the provincial government has felt it has implemented 85% of the recommendations. Information Minister Sharjeel Memon added that the government has set up a commission under Justice (retd) Zahid Qurban Alvi to assess the loss of lives and property and compensation to be paid. He highlighted how they had passed an anti-encroachment law and prepared a bill for the protection of witnesses.

 Police appointments 

The force came under fire for appointments that were politically backed, up to 30%, according to Wajid Durrani who disclosed this to the court as IGP. Durrani was replaced by Mushtaq Shah, who tasked the police’s special branch with verifying this claim. But after some scrutiny, the special branch submitted a report to Shah stating that it had not found any authentic evidence.

For what it is worth, current IGP Fayyaz Leghari has decided to go over the police force again to ferret out political appointments.

Wasay Jalil of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement said, “We honour the SC’s verdict that 40% of the police force has been recruited on political grounds, but want to say that not a single cop has been appointed in MQM’s tenure.” There was ban on recruitment whenever MQM ministers were given the portfolio.

The political parties, which have always denied their involvement in extortion, encroachment and homicide, were exposed when the SC held them responsible last year. Not much has changed on that front.

“People in our party are not sacred. We have taken action against dozens of our workers involved in crime,” said Senator Shahi Syed of the ANP. “We are patiently looking to the other parties where a criminal mindset prevails from the grass roots to the organisational level,” he said.

Wasay Jalil said that the MQM was the only party that had expelled more workers from its rank and file for suspicious activities.

The report card

SC recommended                   Implemented?               Status

Sindh govt has to find a legal solution	X	Govt claims all bills are under process to be moved in Sindh Assembly
Depoliticise and strengthen the police force	Partly	Police conducted scrutiny but did not find any evidence; 5,000 vacancies
Political parties should denounce affiliation with criminal groups	Barely	Parties say they have thrown out criminals, but police arrest criminals affiliated with parties every day
Boundaries of administrative units like police stations should be altered to avoid no-go areas. Undertake delimitation of constituencies too	Partly	EC says election will be held under existing delimitations as no census held. Police structure changed by appointing 20 divisional SPs
Karachi has to be cleansed of weapons	Barely	LEAs seize weapons daily, but appears not to dent homicide rate
All licensed arms genuinely required must be registered with NADRA	Partly	Strangely, from June 2012, manual licences issued by abolishing cell for computerised licences linked to NADRA
Legislate to eliminate and punish land grabbers	Partly	Law passed but implementation a challenge
Sindh government to assess loss to lives, property, pay compensation	Continues	Justice (retd) Zahid Qurban Ali heads the commission, compensation given to families
Eliminate no-go areas, Rangers should take action if reported	X	No-go areas persist
Across the board operation without political interference	Done	A large number of political activists involved in targeted killings and extortion cases arrested, prosecution tricky due to witnesses/evidence
Create an independent and depoliticised investigation agency	?	No special cell but IGP separated investigation, operation wings
Witnesses must be protected	Partly	Bill still pending
NADRA, IGP to set up joint cell to identify, deal with illegal foreigners	Done	Special branch tasked with it, along with NARA, NADRA and Rangers
IGP shall present records of disappearance/elimination of police from 1992, 1996 operations, were families compensated	Done	Report has been submitted and the families were also compensated
Sindh govt shall protect businesses	X	Sept 21 rioting a case in point
Govt should create a committee to ensure forces take action indiscriminately, meet once a month	X	No committee formed

with additional reporting by Hafeez  Tunio and Faraz Khan

Published in The Express Tribune, October 23^rd, 2012.