Karachi violence suo motu: Trouble on all f(r)onts

SC not satisfied with certificates submitted by SHOs about no-go areas.


Naeem Sahoutara April 04, 2013
The map which was printed in the March 23 edition of the Karachi pages of The Express Tribune. The orange zones are partial no-go areas for one particular ethnicity in times of ethnic conflict and the red ones are complete no-go zones because of the presence of gangsters or militants.

KARACHI:


The Supreme Court (SC) has given seven days to the Sindh chief secretary to cleanse the city of no-go areas - a pre-condition to free and fair general elections.


At the hearing of the suo motu case on Karachi law and order on Wednesday, the larger bench felt the law enforcers were wasting their time.

The proceedings started around 10am soon after the judges walked into courtroom one in the SC Karachi registry and took their designated seats at the bench which included Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan followed by Justice Khilji Arif Hussain, Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Jawwad S Khawaja and Justice Amir Hani Muslim.

The no-go areas identified by the March 23 report of The Express Tribune that showed 13 complete and 29 partial no-go areas were on top of the agenda. The chief justice referred to the orders made at the previous hearing to find out how far their orders were complied. The SHOs of all 112 police stations in the city were asked to say in writing that their jurisdictions did not have any no-go areas.

Abdul Fattah Malik, the advocate general, read out excerpts of their report attempting to refute the news report. The judges rejected it, however, when they noticed that all certificates filed by the SHOs carried the same font and the same language. CJP Chaudhry was quick to point out that the same certificates were, in fact, photocopied for all police stations.

The bench came hard on the police officers and ordered them to produce the officer, who wrote the certificate, so that he can be punished for attempting to deceive the court. Before they could pass any order, DIG West Zafar Iqbal Bukhari came forward to claim responsibility, saying that the SHOs were from his zone. “This is a mockery of the court,” said Justice Khawaja, as he closed his copy of the report and handed it back.

The CJP made it clear at several points that no-go areas are those where there is “a fearful influence of criminals”, and not those where barricades have been put up. The bench ordered the police file statements by all SHOs in the city clarifying the status of no-go areas.

The Sindh IGP’s lawyer, Shah Khawar, blamed Karachi’s “thickly populated areas” and “narrow streets” for the no-go areas, but the CJP dismissed it by saying that the whole country has become thickly populated. “It is the job of an SHO to keep an eye on who comes and goes from a neighbourhood,” said CJP Chaudhry.

Meanwhile, the Rangers DG report on their recent operations was also rejected completely when his lawyer, Shahid Anwar Bajwa, failed to explain why suspects of target killings were not charged under section 302 of the Pakistan Penal Code.

“You announce in the newspapers that the Rangers arrested a man who killed 115 people but you fail to mention that you don’t include the correct sections in the FIR,” said Justice Muslim. “No wonder the suspects are released on bail soon after their arrests.”

As Bajwa struggled to explain the missing details in the challans, the CJP noticed that the Rangers DG was avoiding the court “on purpose”. “You see the IGP sitting before us, why can’t your DG come?” he asked. Bajwa replied that the director-general was struck by tragedy after they lost four men in the bomb blast on Wednesday.

Calling the whole exercise a waste of time, the bench ordered the Rangers DG to furnish all the details of the suspects arrested by them, along with interrogation reports of the Joint Investigation Team, any recoveries made from them and the challan prepared by the police in each case.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 5th, 2013. 

COMMENTS (1)

Saqib Moez | 10 years ago | Reply

Instead of doing operation against criminals, Talibans and lyari gangsters police and Rangers are removing barriers used to stop street crimes and dacoities in peaceful areas. CJP rightly said No Go Areas are NOT those areas where there are barriers as barriers also outside Supreme Court but areas where people can not go due to fear of Gangsters and Criminals. If Police and Rangers are removing barriers from areas they should also remove them from outside thier offices if lives of people of Karachi is not safe these Police and Rangers who are responsible for it has no right to use barriers. There is no rocket science in understanding a simple thing that Rangers is now part of problem until they are present peace can not be achieved as if there is peace in Karachi there is no need for them. Under what law Rangers I running Departmental stores food chains Restaurants commercial schools in Karachi?

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