Scouring for clues: Female police officers steal the show

Frere ASP Shahla Qureshi leads her first investigation but seems undeterred.

KARACHI: Female police officers tend to take their work very seriously.

This is what Frere ASP Shahla Qureshi demonstrated as she marched around purposefully in her immaculately polished shoes on the glass covered road at the blast site near Delhi Colony that killed five and injured 30.

Like a fearless police officer, she held a baton in her hands as she dealt with her subordinates.  Once the time came for the investigation, the stick was replaced by a different set of tools: a notebook, a voice recorder, a smartphone and a diary.

Policemen with guns followed her as she moved from one smashed vehicle to the other, trying to find who were in it when the blast occurred and what connections they had.

A man in white kameez shalwar, the owner of a black Toyota Corolla with a damaged windscreen, asked her about his briefcase. “Sir, my men have not touched anything, I suggest you ask your driver,” came the firm but polite response. “They have just started collecting evidence,” she continued, pointing at the police officers that were carefully placing items from the car into plastic bags.

The white Vigo with a green number plate, the suspected explosive-laden rickshaw, the motorcycle, the Toyotas — the vehicles interested her the most, as if certain that is where the answers were.

Since becoming Frere ASP a month and a half ago, this was the first time that she was dealing with a blast incident and it was her debut at heading investigations, but it hardly showed. “The incident is a tragedy,” she said, her light lipstick and black eyeliner unaffected by the hot weather. She then allowed herself to smile, “This is my first time but I am neither nervous nor am I having any problems.”

The officer was clad in a fitted police uniform, a scarf covering her hair, an Elite Punjab Police badge on her shoulder. Her work was as meticulous as her dressing. “Even if a pin is found here, it is important,” she said.

An investigation officer who was taking notes behind her whispered, “She is very strict and disciplined but she is nice.”

Qureshi had arrived at the scene within minutes of the explosion that had taken place in the afternoon. Her first job was to attend to the victims; to make sure that the wounded were immediately taken to the hospital and that there were no more casualties.

Eight to nine vehicles were damaged in the attack but she did not want to say anything until the investigations were completed. “It is premature to determine who the target was,” she said.

Qureshi was not ready to leave the crime scene until her work was done. “It feels good to do some real work,” she said. “Women make up half of the country’s population. They should be in every field.” At the other side of the crime scene, another female police officer was on duty, Clifton SHO Syeda Ghazala.

However, unlike Qureshi, she seemed nervous and jittery as she stood behind the yellow tape, despite being relatively more experienced as this was her second blast site. “This is not my jurisdiction but I have come here to provide support and help.”

With Ghazala came the entire staff of the Clifton police station. “The first thing I did was to cordon off these lanes so that no one enters the area.” Behind her, the clear blue glass shards of a nearby building were scattered all over the road.

For her, this was an act of terrorism. “The whole country is suffering from it,” she said. “Yesterday it was the Sabzi Mandi. Today it is here. God knows where it will be tomorrow.”

And thus, amid a horde of male officers - some who passed jealous and condescending looks at them, others who seemed more serious - the female police officers kept on working.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 26^th, 2014.