- As unruly as before
One of the harshest critics of the Punjab Police, and by default of the PML(N)’s Shehbaz Sharif who ran the province for eight years, was Imran Khan and the PTI, accusing the force of being highly politicized, corrupt, incompetent and relying heavily on inhumane practices of torture and coercion: of the ‘thana culture’. Prime Minister Khan, who is overly involved in Punjab, needs to look into his party’s effectiveness in reforming the Punjab Police as he had promised to do pre-elections. The PTI changed three IGPs (Inspector General of Police) in a span of ten months. There have been multiple incidents that require investigations followed by appropriate action. In January this year a family was shot point blank on a highway in Sahiwal during a botched joint operation carried out by the CTD and ISI. A fair amount of evidence was withheld from forensics teams yet the JIT report confirmed indiscriminate fire on the car the family was travelling in. Meanwhile the indictment of the responsible CTD officials has been delayed and remains pending.
As far as the illegal interrogation practices of the Punjab Police are concerned the government had installed cameras in various police stations to spot illegal torture practices. Rather than act as a deterrent policemen have started renting out private properties or using houses owned by other government departments to carry out their illegal interrogation methods. One of these torture cells was discovered last week in Gujjarpura where eight ‘suspects’ were chained together and regularly beaten, one of whom succumbed to his injuries a few days later in a hospital. A thief, who was arrested in Rahim Yar Khan after CCTV footage of his antics inside the ATM vestibule he was robbing went viral, died in police custody within two days of his detention. Although such incidents are followed by arrests of the responsible officials they hardly amount to much in the way of reforms. A robust accountability apparatus similar to the Internal Affairs Divisions or equivalents in Western countries that looks into police misconduct would be a good start. Better training of existing, and recruiting of new, police officials with an increase in compensation is also necessary. Business as usual will only keep the Punjab Police as unruly as ever.
