Challenge of torture by police

MUHAMMAD ALI NEKOKARA PUBLISHED Oct 04, 2016 12:59pm

The writer is a former police officer.
THE recently released report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) titled This Crooked System:
Police Abuse and Reform in Pakistan, broadly focuses on two areas: a) police misuse of
force including brutal methods of torture and b) weak capacity and support system for
police, which is evident in poor budgetary allocations for police stations and excessive
working hours without any meaningful residential and welfare support. The report has
made exhaustive recommendations to improve police efficiency and the polices human
rights record.
A significant portion of the report focuses on cataloguing allegations of extrajudicial
killings against police in Pakistan. It quotes an anonymous police officer confessing that
extrajudicial killings of serious criminals such as violent robbers, rapists and paedophiles
are considered a necessary evil amongst certain groups of police officers.
The anonymous police officer essentially blames weak investigations, problems of
evidence collection and witness protection, and the slow response of courts for the
failure, generally, to bring brutally violent criminals to justice. The HRW report blames
the police leadership for failing to stop the alleged practice of extrajudicial killing
without adequately discussing the role of other authorities in failing to perform their
responsibility to check the law enforcers.

There is a correlation between a politicised police, police deviance

and lack of accountability.

The report is weak in contextualising the problem of police abuse in our broader sociocultural milieu and in the politics of crime control and justice in the dominant political
economy of neo-liberalism. Moreover, conditions peculiar to Pakistan that are faced by
its law-enforcement departments, including police and security apparatus, have also not
been adequately acknowledged in the HRW report. The document analyses police abuse
and reform in Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan; however, it does not produce any data to
differentiate between these provinces in terms of the prevalence and intensity of police
abuse. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which has been at the forefront of the fight against
terrorism, has not been included in the report.
The concept of Power Distance Index (PDI) explained by Geert Hofstede in Cultures and
Organisations partially helps in understanding the problem of use of torture and its
variants by police. PDI describes the dependence of the weaker sections of society on
the powerful. It explains the degree to which the weaker sections of society expect and
accept that power is distributed unequally. In Sindh, especially in the rural areas, and
Punjab, PDI the gap between the powerful and the weak sections of the society is
quite wide. Likewise the PDI between the police and weaker sections of society in these
two provinces is massive. It is these vulnerable groups the police property, overly

dependent on the powerful, lacking the means to protect themselves against human
rights abuses that often bear the brunt of policing.
It is also crucial to understand the politics of crime control, and law and order in the
broader context of the neo-liberal political economy. Neo-liberalism and its cultural and
social concomitants of inequality, heightened aspirations and unequal opportunities
have a strong correlation with higher and seriously violent crimes, and the consequent
punitive and oppressive trends in crime control.
Increasing demands on the criminal justice system in Pakistan have not been met with
parallel development of capacity building of police, prosecution and courts. Weak
investigations and prosecutions, unavailability of witnesses for fear of reprisal,
overloaded courts and, consequently, the gradual unravelling of the justice system
coupled with rising crime, fear of crime and political and public pressure on police to be
tough on criminals, have led to increasingly harsh crime-control tactics.
The police, however, certainly cannot be allowed to act as judge and executioner. The
role of the police is to investigate, identify suspects, collect evidence against them and
make arrests where required.
It is unfortunate that the response of the authorities and the media towards the
problems of police torture leaves a lot to be desired. At times it is treated as the
elephant in the room while at other times, according to the HRW report, it allegedly
receives tacit approval. Yes, there are instances where police officers are held
accountable by the courts and even booked in cases of murder but the general
perception amongst the citizens about police accountability vis--vis torture remains
very poor.
The report also highlights the correlation between a politicised police, police deviance
and lack of accountability. It is apparent that a politicised police, weak controls and
human rights abuses go hand in hand. It is important to align the police with the law
rather than the government. Sadly, the police, throughout our history, have remained
aligned to the regime and not to the law.
Lack of effective internalised or informal controls and low prospects of external
sanctions facilitate police abuse. Unfortunately these internal organisational and
external oversight controls, which could act as a major deterrent, are weak. That
encourages deviant police officers to break the law in pursuit of their flawed approach
towards crime control and justice.
The situation in the neighbouring countries is equally disturbing. HRW, in its earlier
reports, has also documented serious human rights violations including allegations of
extrajudicial killings against Bangladeshi and Indian police units. The operations of
Bangladeshs Rapid Action Battalion, which was formed in 2004, of the Mumbai police
versus organised syndicates in the 1990s, and of the Punjab (Indian) police against the
Sikh separatists in the 1980s and 1990s are all marred by serious allegations of
extrajudicial killings. In 2013, Surjit Singh, a police officer in Punjab, admitted to having
killed 83 people, including several in extrajudicial killings on orders from his superiors to
target Sikh separatists.
In order to improve respect for human rights among police in Pakistan, in addition to
training, effective internal and external accountability, and de-politicisation of the force,
it is important to help the police officers believe they can perform their job effectively

within the rules. To achieve that, it is crucial to build the capacity of police investigators.
It is equally important to support them with broader reforms in the criminal justice
system such as adequate financial support, increasing the number of judges, efficient
disposal of cases, and witness protection programmes while simultaneously reducing
the disconnect amongst different actors in the criminal justice system.
The writer is a former police officer.
Published in Dawn October 4th, 2016