- Moment of shame!
The Counter Terrorism Department’s (CTD) supposed intelligence-based operation in Sahiwal has proved, once again, that no matter how much money and training you can throw at the police department, it will stay one of the most incompetent, corrupt and abusive of power in the country. The exercise, right from the brutal killings to efforts at cover up – there have been at least four different versions of events from the CTD so far – to false accusations of links to terrorism and registration of a fake FIR, bears text book marks of a crime that everybody has seen the police commit time and time again.
And since the new video of the incident that came online Sunday evening clearly showed police officers moving three children out of the car before killing the rest of its occupants, in cold blood, one wonders what purpose the prime minister’s high-profile JIT will now serve. Also, do such investigations really need a JIT and ‘a report to be presented to the PM in three days’? How hard can it be to produce transcripts of official communication backing the department’s claims? And who ordered the killing, especially in such a brutal way?
This is not, of course, the first such incident. Yet there haven’t yet been any examples where culprits in the police department have been duly punished. How can it be that despite all the training CTD officials still do not understand that, even when apprehending real terrorists, it’s just not for them to pronounce who is or is not guilty, and then take people’s lives in targetted killings? Neither the PM’s tweet nor the CM’s Rs20 million will mean anything to anybody, especially the poor innocent children who just saw their parents and sister get cut down on a main road, unless they can deliver swift and severe justice. And while they’re at it, they must also throw out senior CTD officials who clearly tried to help with the immediate cover up. Once that is done, they must finally begin the long process of reforming this anti-terror force that so often kills the innocent and unarmed and spreads terror among its own people.
