What happens when crime controllers become crime causers? What happens when law enforcers become law breakers? What happens when those who are supposed to provide security become security hazards themselves? Mayhem results, chaos rules and frustration increases, leading to volatility and reactivity. This is exactly what we are witnessing in our society and country where on the roads, in offices and in houses, incidents of robbery, vengeance, and abuse are reaching a frightening level. Randomly ask people what comes to mind when they think of the police and they will say bribes, force, and sometimes torture. Words like ‘protectors’, ‘facilitators’, and ‘service providers’ will rarely be used while that is what their role is supposed to be. The very picture of a police officer in the public’s mind is someone who is mostly overweight, overly moustachioed, with a stick in his hand ready to thrash. While the stick or gun that they carry is meant for those who break the law, it is more used to exercise merciless power over the powerless. That is why today the reputation of the most important institution for preserving law and order in our country has become so questionable.
The media, especially social media, has the ability to capture and share images that perturb and provoke action and reaction, which remain in human archives forever. The daily flashes of beating and torture done by the police has invoked terror where people feel that going to a police station and registering a First Information Report (FIR) is almost worse than the harassment against which they want to file the complaint. Media tickers about girls going to file a complaint against rape in a police station and getting raped by the police is damning for the image of this institution. However, reality needs to pinch the authorities so that they take action against this institutional demise. Thus, reports published by NGOs on these issues need much more attention than they get if we really want to restore the dignity of perhaps the most important institution for keeping society within civilised limits.
Recently, a report published by human rights NGO Justice Project Pakistan (JPP) on Policing as Torture is an eye-opening document of the type of activities going on under the guise of enforcing law and order. This report on “Systematic brutality and torture by police in Faisalabad” examined cases from 2006 to 2012. The JPP did 1,867 case studies of police torture by obtaining medico-legal certificates (MLCs) that are the authenticated documents scientifically describing the torture victims have endured. These are only those victims who had the courage to come forward and talk about it. Many more are those who must have gone through this torture but are not likely to come forward for fear of the police torturing them even more.
This report is hard evidence of how and why people talk with fear of the thana/katcheri (police station) culture. The types of torture inflicted on victims makes Abu Ghraib jail torture pale. Multiple types of torture are used to break the body and, more sadly, the self-esteem of the victims. From ruthless thrashing to tying the arms, hands, legs and shoving chillies in their anuses, and all types of sexual assaults, it is a horrible story of breaking human dignity to below animal levels. In one case, a pregnant woman was beaten to the point where she suffered a miscarriage. Fear and force are the terror tools. Initially, to impose fear in these victims they also make them witness the torture being meted out to other family, friends or victims. This almost always results in psychological impairments that are not quantified as torture but lead to severe mental disturbance like cognitive impairment, depression, anxiety and stress disorders that lead to heart and body ailments. The sad part is that most of these victims were from the lower classes, which do not have the financial or legal influence to either save themselves from this torture or to raise a voice against it in the media. The worst thing described in these reports was that some of this torture was only to terrorise victims to pay a bribe for release from a fake crime accusation, thus making it difficult for poor people to get away from a crime they have not committed.
This is what is happening in Faisalabad, a district that has one of the most prominent and structured police systems in the country where almost 6,000 police officers work in 13 police stations headed by a Central Police Officer (CPO). The report only focuses on Faisalabad city, which is still more of an urban city with media access — imagine the many remote cities where news of events hardly ever reaches outside the four walls of the police station. This structure may be present in every district but how it is staffed and how it is measured on performance is what counts.
Police all over the more developed world have an almost heroic image, e.g. Scotland Yard, the Metropolitan Police and the New York PD. However, in the last many decades, the politicisation of this department in Pakistan has almost turned it into an unbranded militant wing of political parties. Hiring and firing are done entirely on a political basis and even those whom we admire many times become a victim of the horrible gangster culture of this department. Chaudhry Aslam is the example of a brave policeman whom we all admired for his stance against the terrorists but, after his death, it was revealed that his repute was not really above board and he too was more inclined to take the law into his own hands than the other way around. More recently, another bright star in Sindh, Shahid Hayat, who was apprehending gangs and bravely giving statements against political parties’ interference was removed from his job on some technical grounds and put in his place by political pressure exerted by vested interests in Sindh.
As long as a personality culture exists instead of a performance culture, institutions will be weakened and dependent on the people governing them. With the police being used for VIP security and police stations as pawns for political blackmail, they will never be able to have the trust of the people. There is a large budget allocation on police training and capacity building but how can you train people like Gullu Butt? The most effective way to break down law and order in a society is when you give crime a legal and structural cover: terror inside breeds terror outside. For us to deal with the real menace of terrorism we must also target the terror cells bred within our own state institutions.
The writer is an analyst and columnist, and can be reached at [email protected]