Daily Times

I managed to catch the morning news today. Apart from the horrific brutal killings in Karachi and the usual conundrums of living in Pakistan, a much needed and welcome respite was provided by the Inspector General of Police (IG), Punjab.

The headlines flashed, tickers went ticking with the news that the IG Punjab had issued a stern warning to the Station House Officers (SHO), who are affluent enough to support a ‘potbelly’, to lose it fast! If they fail to do as directed and their massive toands (potbellies) cannot possibly be confined in a 38-inch belt by June 30, then they had better be prepared to assume ‘drill’ duties at the police lines!

Bless the media, who then took malicious delight in showing policemen with monstrous bellies, panting away on exercise machines, some in uniform, hoping, praying and sweating for a miracle. And bless them again for showing the next news item: policemen belonging to police station Lytton Road, Lahore, raided a place on a ‘tip-off’, where gambling was going on. And sure enough, they found the gamblers and the equipment, allegedly being used to bet on the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket match going on in India. The police managed to pile the suspects into a police van but much to my amusement, the van would not start. Footage showed four policemen pushing the van loaded with the suspects!

It is no big secret that all our new, faster and better condition police cars are deployed on VVIP escort duties. By the way, if someone did not know, a VVIP is a ‘Very, Very, Important Person’. So much so that the ordinary Pakistani, being an uneducated, ill-informed blighter, has still not figured out exactly why this person is ‘very, very important’ and why just ‘important’ cannot suffice or why exactly is it necessary to compartmentalise people in categories and why the hell does the constitution say all citizens are equal? And why was it that our Prophet Hazrat Muhammed (PBUH) never got himself termed a VVIP or ever got any kind of privilege over others, including a speedier camel? Why is it that he did ordinary chores himself? Could it just be because he was sent with a message to the people, he had to be a living example of all that Islam was about?

There are 180 million people in Pakistan and a handful of VVIPs. How is it that our resources are directed primarily towards their security and ease when the average man is left to writhe in agony?

When I started legal aid, I was so moved by atrocities that sometimes I would do things that my colleagues thought were unbecoming of our profession. First was accompanying illiterate, bruised and battered, vulnerable victims to police stations for redress of their grievances. One such client was a young girl who was a bit slow mentally and had problems handling complex issues. This girl came to me having been assaulted by her husband’s nephews; her head had been split open and required 17 stitches and the rest of her body was bruised and battered. Despite the fact that she had managed to get herself to the nearby police station bleeding and that she had been taken to the hospital on a police docket, where she received medical treatment, the police had lodged no FIR.

Deeply outraged by this atrocity, I decided to call up the SHO of the concerned police station, which was Gowalmandi, Lahore. As I spoke to the policeman on the phone, I nearly had a fit when I discovered that the SHO was a fellow named Bashir Pehalwan! Listening to my protest, Pehalwan sahib invited me to the police station to discuss the matter. What I was definitely not prepared to see was an actual pehalwan (wrestler)! Bashir Pehalwan, SHO, was an original, genuine and huge pehalwan with a girth that would surely distress our IG! Bashir Pehalwan was a nice enough SHO; the only downside was that he was more interested in feeding me gourmet delights from the nearby food street rather than registering an FIR. I was offered breakfast of famous halwa, puri and lassi and I somewhat realised how he had gotten to the size that he was. Since I did not accept his hospitality, no FIR was registered!

Obesity is not just an issue with our police force. A couple of months ago, a review on 11,500 staff on London’s Metropolitan Police found that ‘44 percent were overweight, 19 percent obese and one percent morbidly obese.’ As shocking as it seems, like us the British government does not have an annual fitness test for its police force. While our way to deal with the issue is to give a 40-day deadline, the British government has decided to make some institutional changes. The British have decided to make an annual fitness test compulsory for its police force and in case anyone fails, he will have to face a pay cut. The test includes ‘endurance shuttle run’ and ‘dynamic strength’. The endurance shuttle run is designed to improve fitness for prolonged foot chases, foot patrol and use of force for long periods of time while the dynamic strength is designed to improve the ability to tackle fighting or restraining suspects or in moving and pushing objects. The British are aiming for a fit police force in the next five years. All officers will be required to “pass an assault course-style circuit test including crawling, jumping, climbing, running up stairs and dragging a ‘body’ away from danger.”

Given the changing law and order situation and terrorist threats faced by our force, our police department did take the initiative some time ago and sent members of the force to an anti-terrorist training held jointly by the army and the police. Those who returned from there were fitter and quicker. Unfortunately, there is no concept of annual fitness tests or to be ‘combat’ ready for the police at an institutional level. Sitting at their desks or patrolling on their vans, our policemen seldom face the discomfort of being on foot patrol. The other problem is their unregulated and downright inhumane hours of work, which do not allow for any exercise regime or fixed eating schedule. Top that with the fact that in our part of the world we eat with a passion as if there is going to be no tomorrow!

So, are 40 days enough? The fat in a potbelly is visceral fat; the bad news is that this fat is responsible for heart disease, strokes, diabetes, hypertension and elevated cholesterol levels. The good news is given the fact that one eats healthy food and exercises in order to lose weight, the visceral fat is the first to go. But again, the multi-million dollar question is whether 40 days are enough to tighten the belts. I recall a similar attempt was made a few years earlier but any isolated measure is not going to work; the only way to have leaner policemen is to have annual fitness exams with incentives for those who pass and the chopping block for those who do not.

But an immediate foolproof weight loss measure for the next 40 days is to stop filling up police mobile vans with petrol; in any case, the dilapidated condition they are in, the floors of vehicles are already falling off. Put the obese policemen in the vans and let Fred Flintstone be immortalized, “Yabba dabba do!”

The writer is an advocate of the high court