ON Feb 25, 2024, a video surfaced of an assistant sub-inspector from Rawalpindi beating a local man with a metal object in a crowded police station, for selling kites. This incident came on the heels of a video of a police officer assaulting an elderly woman in Taxila. Rawalpindi’s top cop CPO Khalid Hamdani took notice of both incidents, and has since dismissed the concerned officers and ordered inquiries against them. It is laudable that these measures have been taken, but clearly more needs to be done to address the root causes of police excesses.

The 1857 War of Independence had left the British Raj scratching their heads about how they would quell any mutinous sentiments still smouldering in the hearts of the Indian people, and prevent any future uprisings. Revolution, after all, is bad for business, and the colonial overlords in London were loath to suffer any further threats to their rapacity in the subcontinent.

Using the brutish Royal Irish Constabulary as a blueprint, the Indian Imperial Police was founded in 1861, a decentralised force that existed within a provincial administrative structure. The high-ranking officers were almost entirely Europeans and British, with Indians recruited as the rank and file (largely from the working class). Its raison d’être was the exertion of tight control over the populace, by smothering dissent and enforcing Pax Britannica across the Indian subcontinent through often violent policing methods.

It may come as no surprise that, similar to many of its institutions, Pakistan’s policing system has had a hard time shedding its colonial legacy. It has proved resistant to any meaningful reform, despite numerous attempts over the decades to overhaul and revamp its structure befitting a modern democratic state. It is favourable for the ruling elite to preserve the anachronistic structure of the Police Service of Pakistan that remains at the mercy of resource constraints and arbitrary political influence.

Pakistan’s policing system has had a hard time shedding its colonial legacy.

The use of torture to extract confessions and punish suspects is an everyday reality that many Pakistanis will face when in conflict with the law, depending on their class, gender and political affiliation. This is to be somewhat expected, given the lack of any meaningful forensic investigative capabilities and limited institutional accountability under the law. Deep-rooted systemic flaws have birthed an unfortunate culture of impunity; one which the half-measures taken in the past will not eradicate.

Research by Justice Project Pakistan into instances of torture by Faisalabad police in 2014 unveiled conclusive signs of torture in 1,426 out of 1,867 medico-legal certificates. When the National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR) launched an inquiry based on this research in 2018, they found that none of the officers responsible had been dismissed, and in some cases, had even received promotions.

In November 2022, Pakistan passed the Torture and Custodial Death (Prevention and Punishment) Act. This historic development was a paradigm shift, an unprecedented step towards concrete, human-rights based police reform. Over a year later, however, the Act has not been implemented. It is unclear whether there have been any investigations or prosecutions, given the absence of clear rules that operationalise the Act and define the roles and responsibilities of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and the NCHR (which have been given investigatory powers under the Act).

We no longer exist as a colonial subject that must be made to walk in line with a lathi over our heads. Both Pakistan’s citizens and its police force deserve to exist in a system that is founded on mutual trust and respect, not fear. What is ne­­eded more than ever are rules under the Act, which devise a system for independent investigation of incidents of police torture and an accessible complaint mechanism for the public. The government must allocate sufficient resources to, and build the capacity of, the FIA and the NCHR, and spread awareness among the general public about their rights and protections under the new legislation.

It is not this writer’s intention to point any fingers at individual police officers or paint the entire force with one brush. Rather, the Rawalpindi incidents have underscored the need to change the way we police our society.

Accountability is paramount if there is to be any trust between the people and their watchmen. It is about time CPO Hamdani’s commendable measures became an institutionalised, legal norm.

The writer is an advocacy specialist at Justice Project Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, March 11th, 2024