APROPOS the editorial “No end to ‘encounters’” (July 21), I take strong exception to the views expressed in it. Accepting Dawn’s policy to insist on ensuring that the ‘system’ be followed rather than extra-judicial methods adopted by the law-enforcement authorities, I would say that in an ideal situation this is the one and only policy to be followed.

Would Dawn still maintain this policy even in a dysfunctional situation?

Our lawyers are taught and follow a colonial-based (mainly judicial system) and fail to meet modern-day guerilla-warfare-like situations. Moreover, British law believes that the benefit of the doubt is always given to the accused. If the prosecution shows the slightest doubt, the court sets the accused free.

Here we are dealing with anti-state elements: Harvard-educated militants know our legal system like the back of their hands. They know the loopholes in our law and deny our investigators vital evidence that could pin them down.

In such a situation, you need new laws which deny militants the ability to go scot-free and repeat their vile deeds again and again against the state of Pakistan.

In a situation like that the legal fraternity rejoices at the triumph of the law, while the media and the intellectuals feel elated that the system has prevailed but forget the victim — the general public, a police constable or an MP who stops a militant, and in the process gets blown up.

Who suffers at the end of the day? It is the state. The lawmakers ensconced in their bullet-proof cars and super security system are least bothered about making laws that would nail down a militant but more interested in their own pay packets and perks.

The judiciary, on the other hand, readily jumps at suo motu cases and looks the other way when it comes to indicting lawyers involved in hooliganism, beating up the police, or a judge, or garlanding a criminal before a court appearance, making a mockery of the justice system.

Must we still insist on following this kind of a defective law, a vicious circle — “you catch them, we release them” policy.

Wg Cdr (retd) Sardar Ahmed S. Jan

Peshawar

Published in Dawn, August 4th, 2015

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