IN yet another display of vigilante justice that has, unfortunately, become a regular feature of national life, a highly charged mob attacked a police station in the federal capital on Monday. Armed with batons and iron rods, the angry crowd surrounded the Golra police station and broke into the premises, damaging the offices of the moharrir, investigation officers and the station house officer. The law-enforcement officials tried to protect themselves by locking themselves up but had to seek help from another police contingent that included personnel of the anti-terrorist squad, the anti-riot unit and the counterterrorism department. It took a heavy police contingent an hour of tear-gas shelling and baton-charge before the charged crowd could be dispersed. The protesters wanted the custody of a suspect who was under investigation for a blasphemy-related complaint. Increasingly, there is a tendency to ignore the fact that the fora to probe any offence are the law enforcers and the courts, and not a violent mob. What incidents such as these show is a deep distrust of the judicial system. Even if someone is under investigation and in police custody, the vigilantes want to administer their own barbaric form of ‘justice’.

It is unfortunate that no action has been taken to curb such behaviour and thinking — the consequences of not addressing the regressive ways of society. Mob justice is not limited to cases of alleged blasphemy. Mobs have beaten an alleged teen robber to death in Karachi (2019) and lynched two brothers in Sialkot under the very nose of police officials (2010), and ransacked a traffic police picket in Rawalpindi (2017). Not only do these incidents expose the weakness of the state and its inability to impose its writ and win the confidence of the public through good governance, they also expose the failings of our weak judicial system that often tends to favour the rich and powerful rather than protect the vulnerable. The country needs fair and transparent rule of law, and it needs it urgently.

Published in Dawn, May 20th, 2021