JUSTICE demands that cases are investigated, prosecuted, and decided in an expeditious yet thorough manner. But in Pakistan the state is found to be lacking on all these fronts. Much has been said and written about the problems of Pakistan’s justice system; there is said to be a backlog of around 1.7 million cases in different courts of the country. However, it is also true that the country’s police forces have largely failed to investigate cases in a swift and judicious manner. For example, as reported in this paper the other day, it has been stated that the Lahore police only has 864 investigators to probe 73,739 cases. This is a staggering burden for any police department to bear. As an official told this paper, the collection of evidence and investigation of suspects are demanding tasks, and around 5,000 detectives are needed to make the investigations wing effective. The situation in the country’s other police departments is not much better. For instance in Sindh, while the operations and investigations wings were separated during the Musharraf era, they were merged once more under the PPP’s watch. This has affected the investigators’ performance as many of them, for example, lack proper forensic training. In KP, despite the incumbent government’s talk of ‘change’, observers say the administration is coy about publicly releasing crime figures and only does so after right to information requests are lodged.
There is a causal link between poor investigations and prosecution, and low conviction rates. Firstly, all police forces need to be honest about crime statistics and the number of outstanding cases in their jurisdiction. Underreporting crime will not make it go away. Equally important is the need to have trained personnel in significant numbers to handle the workload and investigate cases along scientific lines. Specialised, dedicated investigators are an essential requirement. What is clear is that unless colonial-era methods of investigation and administration of the police are abandoned, the criminal justice system — already close to collapse — will not change for the better.
Published in Dawn, November 28th, 2015