Attack on judge’s convoy

The law and order situation in the country’s financial hub continues to deteriorate with yet another bomb blast rocking Karachi on the morning of June 26. The convoy of the Sindh High Court Justice Baqar Maqbool was the target of the explosion that took place in the Burns Road area of the city. The bomb was planted on a motorbike that was parked near a mosque, which exploded as the convoy passed by, killing 12 people and injuring 14 others. Thankfully, Justice Maqbool, who is currently performing duties as the acting chief justice of the Sindh High Court, escaped only with injuries.

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan have accepted responsibility for the attack, stating that Justice Maqbool was targeted for his “anti-Taliban and anti-mujahideen decisions”. Our law-enforcement agencies have clearly failed to fulfil their responsibility of ensuring peace in Karachi. The obvious weaknesses in the law-enforcement apparatus — which not only fails to gather intelligence and pre-empt such attacks by infiltrating into terror networks, but also fails to apprehend the perpetrators of these crimes after they have taken place — point to the lack of political will to rectify this state of affairs. It is well known that the police in Sindh need to be depoliticised and provided with sufficient resources to deal with the Herculean task of ensuring peace. The justice system also needs to develop the capacity to convict those who have been arrested for being involved in terrorism and other subversive activities. This will only happen when the police employ modern investigation methods that help in gathering irrefutable evidence, which can stand in a court of law.

During the last five years, targeted killings, suicide attacks, sectarian and political violence in Karachi went on unabated. It remains to be seen if the provincial PPP government is able to reform the security situation this time around. It will have to take other political parties of the province on board if it wants to find a long-term solution to this menace. A unified stance on terrorism and the will to deal with it effectively is needed if peace is to be established. A peaceful Karachi is crucial for the economic well-being of Pakistan; therefore, the PML-N government at the centre must also extend its complete support to the provincial government in this regard.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 27^th, 2013.

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