Video footage of what seems to be police harassment has emerged on the internet, once again bringing the issue of high handedness by the police into the spotlight. The video shows a vehicle with a man and his wife (who is recording the footage), stopped in the middle of a main road in Karachi’s Defence area, surrounded by policemen. The police could be seen and heard asking the man to come out of the vehicle. However, the married couple refuses to comply and instead ask the name of a senior police official sitting in a police vehicle, which is blocking their way.
It later emerged that the senior official in the police car was AIG CTD Kamran Fazal, who insisted that all police officials involved conducted themselves politely during the incident. Explaining why he had stopped the car in the first place, he said the car was being driven recklessly and that the driver had been overtaking other vehicles in a brash fashion.
It must be pointed out here that however recklessly anyone is driving, there are officials whose job it is to manage traffic, and AIG Fazal was not one of them when this incident took place. Therefore, the flagging down of the car and then blocking its way with his own car was highly inappropriate and a needless show of aggression against citizens.
Such actions only worsen the trust deficit that currently exists between citizens and the police in Pakistan. Frequent incidents of police brutality; such as the Sahiwal killings in January this year or the murder of Naqeebullah Mehsud a year before that, along with incidents like this have driven a wedge between the common people and law enforcement agencies which will only make it harder to improve the law and order situation of Pakistan. As such, the AIG must be reprimanded for this incident. A long term policy is also needed to bring police high handedness to a complete end. *