The Nation -- May 23, 1999

Abuse of power by police

Ikram Ullah

The police department of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is currently hitting the headlines of the media, at home and abroad. Not only this. The police is also making news in the courts, at all levels, particularly in the High Courts and even the Supreme Court.
The home public does not find anything odd about this because, over a period of time, it has got used to this phenomenon of the special treatment by the police. However, the international community is increasingly getting disturbed about the behaviour and role of the Pakistan Police Service, for three obvious reasons:
(1) It is generally believed that the concept of government has slightly improved since the Dark Ages, even in the worst type of fascist regimes.
(2) The modern information age has reduced the size of the world to a global village. Whatever happens, worthy of making news, is instantly splashed around the earth.
(3) Certain issues, like human rights and flash points threatening peace, no longer remain confined to political boundaries as internal matters of states.
Hence certain international agencies and the so-called policeman of the world consider it within their rights to take notice of human rights violations and abuse of power by any country. It includes drug abuse as well as political abuse of power, labelled as dictatorship.
Whatever form of good governance the Government of Pakistan might like to claim for itself, the West does not seem inclined to agree that we come up to their minimum acceptable standards as reflected in Europe and North America. It is unfortunate that the conduct, or more aptly, the misconduct of police in general and particularly the performance of this law enforcing agency in Punjab and Sindh, have somehow contributed most toward tarnishing the image of the government in power at any given time. Strangely enough, the rank and file of the Police Department in the provinces of NWFP and Balochistan have been spared the stigma of misconduct, arrogance, dishonouring of women while in police custody and extra-judicial killings during alleged police encounters. There is something inherent in the mindset and traditions of the police in Punjab and Sindh. Maybe the age-old attitude of being more catholic than the Pope has been inherited from the feudal legacy of the British Raj and its mainstay, consisting of the blindly obedient police force. Pakistan's history of the past 52 years is replete with the ruthless and easy going manner in which the police has crossed all moral standards of decency and abused the sanctity of chaddar and chardewari while investigating alleged charges against past rulers. This phenomenon has been repeated with every change of government. Yet no government has bothered to realize that, once they vacate office, there would be little likelihood of their exemption from the accepted practice, by now well established in Pakistan.
The tragedy is that no government seems to learn any lesson from the past.
Every Prime Minister, starting from Moeen Qureshi in 1993 uptil now, annually address the National Defence College on the subject of "My Vision of Pakistan". If someone were to collect and compile the addresses made by almost half a dozen Prime Ministers (including the caretakers) to the NDC, it would appear that the new millennium was already here. No Prime Minister has gone beyond his vision to ensure its implementation. The consequent result is that the administration has slowly but surely drifted towards the semblance of a police state.
We still do not know as to who assassinated the first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan. Suspicions have since lingered that the police had a hand in it. Years later, Nawab Muhammad Ahmed Khan of Kasur was shot dead in the mid-seventies at Lahore. The chief of the elite police force – Federal Security Force (FSF) – confessed before the Lahore High Court that the killing was carried out on the explicit order of the Prime Minister. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was sent to the gallows for this crime, but the FSF chief was let off on the grounds of having become an Approver. Unwittingly, the seeds were thus laid for abuse of political power through the instruments of the police. The rest is history. You let the genie out of the bottle and he would not spare his own masters. Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's own brother, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, was killed during a police crossfire, while Benazir held the Prime Minister's post. Extra-judicial police killings have since become the order of the day. It would be naive to believe that the government is not aware of the actual position. No junior police officer could dare take such a step without a green signal from above. Whether this means the SSP, the DIG or the Inspector General Police (IGP) himself, is anybody's guess. However, it is hard to believe that if the IGP is determined to put an end to extra-judicial killings, his writ can be easily ignored, much less defied, by any junior at the Inspector or Sub-Inspector level. It is inconceivable that any abuse of power inside or outside the police stations could take place while such honorable and professional gentlemen as Mr. Jehanzeb Burki and Rana Maqbool are at the helm of affairs in Punjab and Sindh. Yet pick up any national newspaper on any day of the week and the stories of abuse of power by the police hit you in the face.
Let us for a moment forget about Asif Ali Zardari. A judicial inquiry has been ordered and the truth will soon come out whether the husband of the former Prime Minister attempted to commit suicide in a state of despair or whether he was subjected to police torture. According to the police, Zardari inflicted injuries on his neck and hands through a broken glass tumbler. A lot of blood flowed out as a result of this alleged suicide attempt before the police could control the situation. Our doctors at the Aga Khan Hospital Karachi should be able to determine what caused the cuts in the tongue.
According to the police spokesmen at various levels, the attitude of the police during arrest and subsequent investigation is reasonably gentle and civilized. Proof – Rahmat Shah Afridi, Imtiaz Alam, M.A.K. Lodhi, Hussain Haqqani and, last but not the least, Najam Sethi have no complaint about any abuse of power or maltreatment by the police. In case their family members or lawyer have any thing to the contrary, all they have got to do is to file a petition before any court of law and our excellent judicial system shall immediately come into action for providing necessary relief under the law of the land. What more could one demand out of good governance and a totally independent and impartial judiciary? All recent judgements in well-known cases bear testimony to the above healthy and fearless functioning of our state organs. What worries the common man is the indignity and disgrace resulting from the present thana culture. No one knows how many women suffered gang-rape at the hands of the police during the, let us say, past one year. The worst aspect is that no action is taken and most of such crimes are hushed up. The owner of a service station on Poonch Road, Samanabad, Lahore has petitioned before the Lahore High Court that the local police desired to have a few of their vehicles serviced free of charge. On hesitation from the service station owner, they not only harassed the owner Asim Jehangir, but also broke into the office, took away the service station's cash and also took into illegal custody an employee of the service station. It is alleged that later his house was also raided and family members humiliated. According to Asim Jehangir, the police took away from his house two motorcycles, jewelry and whatever cash they could lay their hands upon. According to Asim, the police threatened to kill him in an encounter if their high officials were notified. Another interesting case came up before Mr. Justice Zafar Pasha Chaudhry of the LHC on a complaint from a court bailiff who had been humiliated and kept in illegal confinement when the bailiff made a raid at a police station to retrieve two illegally detained men, Sardar Khan and Nawaz Khan, on the orders of the Court. Many fake Hudood cases are registered against honourable citizens while having a walk in a park. The worst stigma against the Pakistan police is the treatment meted out to the accused at the time of arrest and during subsequent investigations. The BBC has compiled a detailed report published in the national Press on Friday. One wishes it could be dismissed as a pack of lies and prejudice. However, even if half of it is true, it can bring nothing but shame to any country at the international level.
Who is responsible for all this? There must be a remedy. There is no ailment without a cure, provided the physician is determined to heal the patient and possesses the necessary professional qualifications. Why is the police in other countries more civilized and service-oriented than in Pakistan? There are no "monthly" charges collected by the traffic police. If the DIG Traffic does not understand this. Let him hop in a truck at Attock bridge and travel in civil clothes along with the truck driver upto Punjnad. The same applies to almost all SSPs, DIGs and IGs(P). Do these gentlemen ever carry out the regular thana inspections as laid down in law? I bet not. This failure has given birth to the present sick thana culture. With all due respect the same indifference towards inspection of thanas, applies to the high dignitaries of State, whose motorcades dash along the highways without bothering to stop for five minutes at a roadside police station and take the trouble of peeping in. This one step alone could make all the difference in controlling abuse of power by the police and as a dividend, enhance the image of the rulers beyond their imagination.