Daily Times

On September 16, Sindh Chief Minister, Syed Murad Ali Shah approved allocation of Rs 2.2 billion for the purchase of 30,000 sub-machine guns (SMGs) from the Pakistan army, and special training of 2,500 policemen to be imparted by highly professional trainers of the Pakistan army and other countries. The allocation is aimed to build capacity of the Sindh police to deal with terrorists, target killers and other such criminals.

The police have to prevent and control serious crimes threatening our lives and property. They are supposed to assist and protect victims of crime. They have to facilitate movement of people and vehicles. Conflicts between individuals, groups and anyone in conflict with government are to be resolved by them. They have to identify problems before these become more serious for individuals, police and government, and to create and maintain a feeling of security in society. However, the Sindh police lacking modern training and state-of-art technology used in crime investigations have failed to bring about their activities in line with expectations of people.

Currently, police training institutions have been imparting conventional training to constables, head constables, assistant sub-inspectors, sub-inspectors and inspectors; this training gives excessive preference to physical exercise. The police personnel are taught outdated crime investigation methodologies, which have no practicability in this scientific age.

One of my police officer friends who had undergone training in these institutions many times told me: “In police training institutions in Sindh, physical training is given enormous significance. Trainers having no expertise in law conduct law classes using outdated syllabi, and of all the trainees, only 20 to 30 percent attend law classes. That is why these trainings are not helpful in our practical field.”

There is prevalence of corruption to an epidemic proportion in the Sindh police. Outrageous narratives of police brutality against the public are not a new phenomenon. Two months ago, a shocking incident occurred in Shikarpur. Assisted by his subordinate staff, an SHO had beaten a complainant, Abdul Ghaffar Arain — who had gone to a police station to lodge an FIR against someone who had borrowed money from him — after he refused to bribe the SHO to help him in getting his money back. The complainant being severely tortured suffered a heart attack and died. Regrettably, the police officials responsible for Arain’s torture have yet not been arrested. This hostile behaviour of the police is reportedly the result of the present training being given to the police personnel, which empowers them to sustain their place as an oppressive instrument of the state. To make the police public-friendly, interpersonal communication skills development training should be given to the police personnel to teach them how to deal with complainants from different backgrounds.

For better law enforcement in the province, one of the significant steps the Sindh government has to take is that the police system is entirely depoliticised to empower policemen to independently exercise the powers assigned to them under the police law. As the interference of state politics continues in the police department, most of the politicians of the ruling party in interior Sindh –with intention to achieve their political interests including stability of their feudalistic hegemony and putting pressure on their political rivals — get police officers, especially station house officers (SHOs), of their choice posted in their constituencies. In this situation, these police officers are unable to dispense justice to common people, and to perform their duties in line with law. Moreover, most of the officers with no political affiliation remain without posting for a great part of their service.

In Sindh, the criminal justice system has huge problems in terms of fair trial as conviction is based on statements extracted through torture or other forms of ill-treatment. Custodial torture, experienced by an overwhelming proportion of the accused, is considered as an inevitable and significant part of crime investigation for extracting self-implicating, confessional statements from suspects. In the absence of modern forensic tools, the judiciary and prosecution rely upon these confessional statements. The Sindh police need state-of-the-art training institutions to equip their personnel with greater capacities in connection with investigation processes. The department has to kick off programmes such as digital forensic training and intelligence analysis that are of actual use in real-world situations. As a result, the provincial criminal justice system would be capable of dispensing justice to the public.

Although high-rank officers including ASPs, SSPs, DIGs, AIGPs and others, before and during police service, have been imparted both indigenous and foreign trainings on advanced forensic and crime investigation methods, yet these trainings have not proved to be constructive. The police, mostly, fail to find real causes of crimes conducting investigations of cases. The reason is that these officers are not involved directly in crime scene investigations. To make investigations a success, these trainings — with regular refreshers on up-to-the-minute innovations occurring in the field of investigations and evidence collection — must also be given to assistant sub-inspectors, sub-inspectors and inspectors who are responsible for conducting crime scene investigations and collection of evidence.

The fact is that reforming the Sindh police is not an impossible task if the people in charge show sincerity and commitment. What is needed is a professional police force that serves the people according to the law. And of course, it can only be possible when the law department has been completely depoliticised, and when policemen have been equipped with a training of international standards. Moreover, planned specialised training should not be limited to the usage of security equipment and physical exercises.

The writer is an academic, and can be reached on Twitter @ARShykh