Justice delayed

Justice has not been delivered in perween Rahman's murder case and this sets a terrible precedent for the future

There can be very little hope for a country where social activists, working for the poorest sections of society, are first murdered and then those seeking justice for them threatened. It is even worse when such threats and intimidatory tactics come from the police, apparently attempting to cover up the true sequence of events and force into silence those attempting to bring them to light.

This is what has happened in the case of Perween Rahman, the director of the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) who was shot dead in March 2013 near her place of work. Since then, there has been very limited progress in identifying those responsible, with activists, including Ms Rahman’s sister, Aquila Ismail, a noted activist, teacher and writer, citing increased harassment since a petition was filed by activists with the Supreme Court in July 2013. Ms Ismail also believes that a January 2014 attack on the OPP-Research & Training Institute (RTI) Joint Director, Salim Alimuddin, was directly linked to the apex Court’s decision to accept the petition for hearing. The incident forced the RTI to move out of Orangi, weakening its operations. Since then, there have been other attempts at intimidation, some coming from police officials. The OPP has been asked to ‘compromise’, something it will not do. The police have been reluctant to act on the possibility of land mafias being involved and the Court has rejected reports filed so far on this dimension to the case.

Ms Rahman’s murder was a tragedy. It is still worse that more than two years on, we have been unable to move effectively towards solving the sordid affair because our judicial system has been shackled by threats made and the tactics used to scare complainants away. The involvement of the police in this truly means that they stand on the side of criminals, rather than their victims, and in this situation it is virtually impossible to hope for justice which is the right of every citizen. Justice has not been delivered in this case and this sets a terrible precedent for the future. No one can be safe in such circumstances.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 2^nd, 2015.

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