STUNG by public uproar over rising street crimes, Karachi police appears to be resorting to a ‘quick fix’ — encounter killings. Since the beginning of the year, there have been 254 alleged police encounters in the city, resulting in the death of 27 suspects and injuries to around 300. In March alone, there were no less than 96 such incidents, in which 11 suspects were killed and 125 wounded. When asked about the startling number of shootouts, the city police chief described it as “proactive policing” that involves collecting “CCTV footage, identification of the criminals and their hot chase to pre-empt” them from committing further offences. Some questions immediately arise: firstly, if these are genuine ‘encounters’, how many casualties have the cops suffered, and secondly, how many civilians have been caught in the crossfire? It is unlikely that casualties would only occur on the suspects’ side unless the old modus operandi practised in the metropolis by infamous ‘encounter specialist’ Rao Anwar has once again been dusted off. In that instance, purported terrorism suspects were targeted in hundreds of ‘encounters’ overseen by the former SSP. However, the murder in January 2018 of aspiring model Naqeebullah Mehsud and three other innocent men lifted the veil on the sordid reality of what can happen when extrajudicial killings are normalised.

Sadly, the tacit acceptance of fake encounters to plug the loopholes in the judicial process — and no doubt, to dispense with the hard work of collecting prosecutable evidence — is widespread in the country as a whole. The result is a brutalised, trigger-happy law-enforcement apparatus that knows it can get away with murder. Punjab has been particularly notorious in this respect. In January 2019, a couple and their daughter along with a family friend were gunned down while travelling in their car near Sahiwal by the provincial counterterrorism police; the cops were acquitted by an anti-terrorism court. While the Karachi police is trying to gain the citizens’ trust by tackling street crime, which is its responsibility, breaking the law in the attempt to do so is self-defeating and short-sighted. The expedient tactic inevitably corrupts the criminal justice system further by affording the police impunity in their violation of fundamental rights to security of person and to due process. Extrajudicial killing is the shortest route to a scenario where even law-abiding citizens will have good reason to be afraid for their lives and property — from law enforcement itself.

Published in Dawn, April 14th, 2022