KARACHI: Most people in this city missed a heartbeat to learn of a robbery in a bookbinder’s home in New Karachi on Wednesday night. This was because of the reported involvement of an entire police station in this disagreeable drama. There was no surprise but the horror that some of the men in our police force can stoop so low. By no means an unheard of thing.
It is very easy to strike a holier than thou posture and pontificate on the morals of a certain percentage of our public servants for whose salaries and perks the citizen foots the bill. It goes without saying that errant behaviour is not the exclusive privilege of the men in police uniform.
Similar, even vastly more deplorable misdemeanours, are daily committed by government personnel in other services. Corruption is certainly not the art and craft exclusive to the police. Of course, this is not to condone the New Karachi robbery. It ought to be condemned even if it cannot be condemned strongly enough. As the city talks about it in a mood of agitation and disgust, there is a danger that we might miss the crux of the message from New Karachi in the surge of sentimental over-reaction. Without doubt utterly squalid this incident is. Let us think it over with a cool head and steady heart. This is not the whole of the disease, only a symptom of it.
The audacious involvement of police personnel in a dastardly robbery should leave us numb. That instead of protecting the citizens, the area police should lead a terrorist onslaught is nothing short of a loathsome outrage. The police higher officials must probe this particular case to its minutest details. Let us hope this will be done with all diligence.
Now, let us ask ourselves a very simple question. Would this kind of crime disappear from our environment after the guilty in this particular have been given due punishment? The answer is a resounding NO. This is not an isolated case of robbery or crime in which policemen feel free to try their hand, abusing their powers and contaminated clout. What about the Ramaswamy rape case?
There would be many factors behind this phenomenon of the minions of law launching an assault on the law itself. One clearly visible the possibility is that the erring policemen would get away with their criminal act and its sumptuous bonus. In a climate where protected people in official positions enjoy a high percentage of immunity from detection and punishment, crime would flourish and also prosper, instead of the culprits landing behind the prison bars.
Now is the time once again to recall earlier incidents of a manifestly criminal nature that have been forgotten after a day or two of public consternation and the officials going through some pious motions, making even more pious promises. Then everybody forgets. The citizens have a duty here — to keep pegging away at crimes not duly investigated and prosecuted. How many citizens try to repeat wake-up calls? Let the question ring like a wake-up call for the people, at least for the senior citizens. There was a time when it was mandatory for all police stations to have a large blackboard with relevant statistics of crimes committed and the progress in investigation-prosecution-convictions.
Again, there was a time when policemen’s careers in the service depended upon their performance in containing and combating crime in their precincts. One may recall here that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, during his second incarnation, had in his grandiose style ordained that crimes would be put down to the record of the police officer/station in charge of the areas.
Our political leaders, the ones who are the loudest in demanding democracy and promising to protect the people’s interests, are usually those who consider a promise is honourably fulfilled the moment it was made and also instantly forgotten. For so many years, the police have been their own master frankly in disregard of their local political bosses.
The day the police force was politicized, it ceased to be police. It became a stakeholder in the politicians’ investments and also in the returns on that investment. Are we not aware of the powerful wadera befriending the SHO of his area and thus empowering the SHO to hold his boss in the district headquarters in little regard? When you play such games with the lower rank police officers, you invite robberies in the New Karachi style.
Of late, we have seen a raging debate over the Citizen-Police- Liaison-Cell, the celebrated CPLC. We are solemnly assured that the CPLC is clued up to everything pertaining to, and related to, the citizens and the police. This duly reputed organization is said to be a thoroughly modern outfit, with the computer systems that are rated second to none. Good to know that.
Public memory is notoriously short. To be honest, a short memory is a blessing to people whose memory is under perpetual assault of incidents normal human beings would rather forget because there is precious little they can do to set wrong things right. But the CPLC may have a part here to play, particularly when is said to have the wherewithal to do justice to that part. Now that a diabolical crime has come to light and one that seems to have shaken the entire police hierarchy, with the Inspector General Syed Kamal Shah directly in command, there should be a review of robberies in Karachi during, say, the past three years. It must be conceded that Karachi is a gigantic city and policing it under the circumstances all too well known is not an easy assignment. Refreshing our memory about past robberies should be educative and chastening for all concerned — the public as well as the police. It is time to be reminded of robberies committed, investigated, prosecuted in the past. And also about robberies committed, not properly investigated and not effectively prosecuted. Such statistics should have food for thought for all of us. Would the CPLC consider taking this up, please.
Reports about the New Karachi robbery make interesting as well as shocking reading. It appears clearly
enough that the involvement of the policemen was not casual or perfunctory. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the drama was conceived, scripted and played out with professional gusto and expertise. The after-crime scenario is also revealing. Sympathizers of the victim had bundles of sagely advice to give.
The role played by the Nazim of the area should tell some bizarre tales. It is reported that the Nazim also visited the house targeted by the robbers. How nice and thoughtful indeed of the honourable Nazim. After all, the citizens of New Karachi elected him. The Nazim advised the (vandalized) family to pardon the policemen, otherwise the police might persecute the family in future.
Where the elected representatives of the people stand on the side of the (alleged) robbers and advise the citizens not to report the crime but make it up with the police involved in a squalid crime, the New Karachi robbery should be seen as not a matter to write home about. When the Nazim should have no compunctions, it is possible to take the police to task with an easy conscience.
