After Nazim Jokhio, now it is Naqeebullah Mehsud, whose blood finds no hands guilty of his cold-blooded murder. Jokhio and Mehsud were technically not killed by anyone, but it is safe to assume that the system killed them all at once. Anyone’s life can be taken by the same mechanism. After a thorough five-year trial, if this was the court’s decision in the murder case of Naqeebullah Mehsud, the exercise should never have been started. Five years ago, Naqeebullah Mehsud, Sabir, Nazir Jan, and Ishaq were discovered and shot to death in a deserted area. The police later claimed they were killed in an encounter in Karachi because they were Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan members. If the rights activists had not interpreted the case as “staged,” it could have been just another file on the shelf. Later, a police inquiry team labelled it the encounter ‘false’ after an investigation. Former SSP Rao Anwar, an infamous cop implicated in the extrajudicial killings of approximately 500 people over the years, was singled out. He had long been known as the “encounter specialist,” and he had survived several suspensions and years of suspicion that he was involved in extrajudicial killings. This was one of the reasons the Naqeebullah Mehsud case drew so much attention, with some anticipating it would be a watershed moment for the legal system. Five years later, the matter has been resolved with an anti-terrorism court clearing all defendants, including Anwar, who maintained Naqeebullah was a terrorist right after his acquittal. Good joke. The case shows a range of injustices and discriminations, including the impunity law enforcement has for acts of violence, the manipulative labelling of an entire ethnic group as “terrorists,” as well as the privilege people in positions of authority enjoy. The acquittal will probably be challenged by Naqeebullah’s family, and again, the verdict can be well predicted. It was the state’s duty to see that those charged with his murder received fair trials. The acquittals sparked public outrage since they were not entirely unexpected, given the lack of hope and expectation from a system that shies away from pursuing “its own,” and with witnesses in many cases easily backtracking. As vital as it is to hold those responsible for Naqeebullah’s killing accountable, there must also be an honest accounting of how law enforcement has essentially taken the law into its own hands on far too many occasions, even after the verdict is announced. The case is ongoing unless some killers are found and punished. *