FOR journalists, it is something many dream about. The job of reporting crime and corruption could be made much easier if all they needed to do to establish their stories was tether a politician to a polygraph machine and start grilling them till the truth came out. But there are good reasons lie detector tests are rarely used in high-stakes cases. They cannot always be trusted to tell the truth, and they can be incredibly invasive. They should be used only in cases where there is some urgent need to establish the facts. In the case of our jailed ex-prime minister, such circumstances do not exist. The state has already found excuses aplenty to keep him behind bars, and it now seems to be indulging in theatrics just to keep the show going on.

A former prime minister should not be treated like a common criminal. It is unseemly. Just like the retired heads of other institutions of the state, a former head of government should be entitled to some dignity, privileges and protections worthy of their past office. If not, then it is only fair to ask for certain retired judges, bureaucrats and generals to also be subjected to polygraph tests, so that the public may finally have answers for the controversies they have been embroiled in. In fact, so should all public representatives, the overwhelming majority of whom keep more than one skeleton in the closet. The fact is, most would quickly fail such a test if confronted with the right questions. Humans lie; politicians and powerful people lie more than the average person. It is almost part of the job description. And this is why it is much more reasonable to prosecute them for the myriad crimes they are routinely accused of with the help of concrete evidence and facts, established under the law, rather than on the basis of what a machine thinks they may be thinking. It is, therefore, wrong to expect the jailed PTI leader to take a polygraph test for whatever reason. It would be just as wrong for any other leader to be subjected to the same treatment. The state has amply demonstrated, especially in the Iddat case, that it does not recognise the boundaries between the public and the personal. One naturally ought to be distrustful of its true intentions in such instances.

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2025