Unacceptable
Relevant authorities better make sure that the Karachi police shooting incident – where plain clothed policemen killed a victim of a mobile phone robbery – is investigated properly and suitable punishment is awarded to the guilty party. Only very recently did the Karachi police, because of the Operation, just begin to shed its long, well-deserved reputation for unnecessary violence and a tendency for trigger happy behaviour. According to the police itself, the unlucky boy – a student – was selling a mobile phone when the buyer tricked him and drove away with the device. The boy then hung onto the car; and when the police spotted this ‘unusual behaviour’, they followed the vehicle for a bit and then opened fire.
Surely, even in cases of uncertainty, there are certain protocols to be followed instead of resorting to blind shooting then fleeing from the scene. They could have tried to immobilise the vehicle, or – if the case seemed extreme – shot to injure the suspect instead of resorting to immediate lethal action. That these members of the counter terrorism department then chose to run away from the scene – and it took some amount of investigation on part of the police itself to locate them – only proves how irresponsibly they had acted.
This behaviour is unacceptable. The boy was a victim of a theft. If anything, the police force should be trained to help and assist people in his position. This crime calls for immediate accountability and introspection. The killers must be made to pay for their crime. And the force itself should take a good long, and long over-due, look at its way of doing things. Such examples give strength to claims, mounting over years, that the Sindh police is brutish, corrupt and unfair. And that is because of poor accountability in the system. If at all such claims are true, now is the time to start a process of reforms that will finally lay them to rest.
