‘Misuse’ of power

The fight between two teenagers in DHA, Karachi, which led to the death of one young man and a police constable is a sad reflection of the way power is misused in our society. According to initial police investigations, two schoolgoing teenagers had an argument which escalated to the point where one of the two boys, whose father is a superintendent of police, came to the other’s house along with five police constables. The fight apparently went out of hand and, in the resulting exchange of fire, one of the boys and a police constable died.

This is not the first time that such an incident occurred — the Shahzeb Khan and Hamza Ahmed cases immediately come to mind and in both, young lives were needlessly lost. Even though Shahrukh Jatoi was convicted of killing Shahzeb Khan and the accused in Hamza Ahmed’s murder was also arrested, it seems parents and young men have not learned their lessons. Parents are still allowing their kids to misuse the resources that should not be at the disposal of the children to begin with, giving their children a sense of entitlement and power that their young minds use to cause harm to others.

It may be too early to claim which of the two parties was at fault but there are some glaring issues that this incident reveals that must be addressed immediately. Why were police constables accompanying an 18-year-old boy to a personal fight? If the policemen were on duty at the superintendent’s house, then it is a blatant violation of the rules for them to accompany a young man to a quarrel and then open fire at the rival group — and that too, using officially issued Kalashnikovs. And what kind of parenting are we seeing in our society?

This calls for an investigation into the superintendent and the police department. The authorities must take to task these constables, and impose such exemplary punishment that other police officers think twice before they take the law into their own hands.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 10^th, 2014.

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