Who will bell the cat?

Islamabad: Not a single day passes on without a complaint against the police from any corner of the country. Somewhere it is involved in lodging a concocted case for extortion of money from the resident of a shantytown or beating a procession.

Somewhere an accused is found dead in a police lock-up. This is the reflection of a rotten policing system in the country. Why all this happens, no one answers about the declining state of affairs.

Police are one of the colonial legacies in the sub-continent, which have failed to attain the status of community service. It had been stunted to the level of the constabulary. It was raised to quell riots and rebellions (social, political, and religious) against the erstwhile British Rule on the pretext of maintenance of law and order. In those days, police were cruel, bearing an emblem of a torture machine but, they were not corrupt as it is doused in corruption today.

The police were trained to haul and arrest political workers or rights activists rather than nabbing criminals. Even today it is more adept at crushing a protest meeting or a rally than combing diehard criminals involved in theft, burglary, or killing. On the one hand, its main task is rooting out politics and its related political activity and on the other hand providing security to the ruling elites. In other words, police are paid out of public taxes to make fool-proof security arrangements for those who themselves are law-breakers or manipulators.

The police force breathes into a separate world. One (from Constable to SHO) is plagued with drudgery. They do not have any educational and health network to cater to the needs of their families or own industrial units for the welfare of their retired employees. The officers of the superior cadre (from ASP to IGP) run and control the administrative pulse of the system. They are constrained to protect the ruling groups.

Each elected representative (ministers, MNAs, MPAs, senators, and party heads) considers it his/her birthright to get his/her blue-eyed deputy commissioner and district police officers appointed in his/her district to advance political and business gains or to punish rivals in the constituency.

In the last three and half years, the Punjab Government, during its incomplete tenure, has got five inspector generals of police transferred and posted in the province while it enjoyed the complete backing of the federal government. Those MPAs who failed to get a slot in the cabinet were bestowed upon with others favours like getting appointments of their own officers in the districts. Getting fake FIRs lodged against adversaries had been the glaring example of “public service” of the government’s affiliates.

When lawbreakers come down from the top, the police feel comfortable running their own unlawful businesses in their respective areas of influence. When the FIA has been vested with the task of arms twisting the opposition members, then no one can point a finger at the performance of the agency.

Then the inappropriate level of human trafficking does not ruffle the comforts of those sitting in the power corridors. How many Afghan refugees have so far obtained passports illegally? How many Afghan refugees, after greasing the palms of immigration officers, have crossed the red line of the immigration desks? Despite all this, the people involved in the banal transactions wrestled slots in the province. It is all available in black and white. It has been the habit of corrupts and crocked officers to benefit from the flued political situation. Uncertainty favours them to mint money through hybrid techniques. Despite recommendations of the successive regime on police reforms, the police are still clinging to the old colonial methods of policing. “Who will bell the cat,” it is the main question for reformers.