A murder and the failure to convict is an affront to society. With ever-rising numbers of honour killings, quasi-suspected murders presented as suicides or natural deaths, it is a problem that is at the forefront of news and media channels. This reality is an important reminder, but it is an issue that falls on the wayside on social media and public in general. For the last many years, murders in the name of honour or rather dishonour killings have been happening all over the country. So far the demands to investigate and punish the crime have been met with an almost deafening silence. While promises have been made to introduce acts against violence against women it does not address the severity of the issue.
The 28-year-old Samia Shahid was reported dead due to natural causes, but the forensic report has confirmed that she had been murdered, and her death had been caused due to suffocation. It throws light on police investigations and clinical standard of forensic investigations in Pakistan, and it is not the first time and surely not the last time that the Punjab police failed in some of their duties. How can anyone trust any future or past inquiries when the police have failed in their duties to sufficiently investigate crimes? A national inquiry is urgent since police investigations have proven insufficient.
We live in a world where everyday we talk about appropriate responses to crimes, but when crimes actually need a significant response there is almost none. According to the most recent Human Rights Watch report, there has been an increase in unsolved cases in Pakistan. It is a serious human rights concern, but still not serious enough for the government. It shows the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour that amount to incompetence through unwitting ignorance and thoughtlessness that deeply affects the image of the institution of police.
The worst thing about the tragic mishandling of the Samia murder investigation is the resulting inaccuracy. What is the matter with the law enforcement authorities of the Punjab government? Have they lost their sense of reason? Or at least inexcusably set aside the realisation of what they are trained to do, and for whom they work? If ever a murder case was studded with fumbling, halting, inept intentional bungling, and an inability to investigate people who in this case should have been questioned, the Samia Shahid case has it all.
Was the murder of Samia Shahid a matter of honour killing? Why the hypocrisy in this case? Who is trying to deceive whom? From the very beginning of this case, from the first hour that the murder became known to the authorities by a press release from the husband, from that moment on, the case has been another example of ineffectiveness of police investigation in Punjab.
The first forensic report is shoddy, to say the least. Of course, the clues were thought to have been virtually erased by the killer. Of course, the whole thing is botched up so badly that head or tail cannot be made of it. In the background of this case are family, relationships, hired lawyers, an ex-husband who ought to have been subjected instantly to the same third-degree to which any other person under similar circumstances is subjected, and a whole string of special and bewildering extra-privileged courtesies that should never be extended by authorities investigating a murder — the most serious and sickening crime of all.
There has been the spectacle of a entire Mirpur community watching a batch of law enforcement officials fumbling around and bowing and scraping in the presence of people they ought to be dealing with just as firmly as any other persons in any other crime. That spectacle not only became a stench but a serious threat to the dignity of law enforcement itself. A reviewed forensic report was not timelier than the falsified first forensic report, which left the killer secretly laughing at the whole spectacle — the spectacle of the community of 10 million people brought to indignant frustration by Samia’s killer in that little house out in a Mirpur village.
Around one-quarter of murder investigations are solved relatively soon after the offence, and with a limited investigative effort. In enquiries where this is not the case, and where more investigative effort needs to go into identifying and building a case against the offender, the consequences of an investigative failure can be considerable, both in terms of public concern and diversion of police resources. One of the ways in which the police service in Punjab would improve the quality of murder enquiries is by conducting reviews of investigations on all murders that remain undetected after 28 days. The aim of the review process should be to identify and develop investigative opportunities that will progress an investigation, to act as a form of quality assurance in relation to both the content and process of an investigation, and to identify, develop and disseminate good investigative practices.
Why do systems fail and what is to be done to minimise failure? An investigative failure may reflect the unique circumstances of an offence, or it could be due to investigative errors. These errors might be recurrent low-risk errors, which although frequently occurring are unlikely to have a detrimental impact on the investigation. Atypical high-risk errors, however, occur less frequently but with a much greater impact. In major crime investigations as in other tightly-coupled systems, errors in practice or reasoning can rapidly amplify and compound other existing problems. Murder reviews can be seen as a form of risk management that seeks to apply the principles of a system’s audit in order to reduce the likelihood of both recurrent and atypical errors.
Why should the police humiliate themselves? Why do they cover up or hide behind a circle of people who protect them? What is the matter with us? Who are we afraid of? Why do we have to embarrass our institutions to a set of circumstances and people when a murder has been committed? It is high time that somebody took some serious action into this situation, and tore aside the restraining curtain of sham, incompetence and injustice. And that the police handled the business of solving a murder honestly, quitting this nonsense of blatant incompetence.
The writer is a professor of psychiatry and consultant forensic psychiatrist in the UK. He can be contacted at [email protected]