THE police are paid to enforce law, control crime and catch wrongdoers, besides adhering to the principles of justice. To maintain law and order, the police need to cherish harmonious relations with the public to seek the latter's help in expeditious detection of crime and prevention of potential social deviance.

To maintain peace, an effective policing system is needed. However, political intervention and corruption have so reduced the police to an incompetent force.

After recruitment, cops have to go through professional training. Regrettably, majority of the instructors in training centres are product of the same corrupt culture and are not qualified to undertake the task of training the young recruits.

Most training centres are devioid of modern training facilities. With the exception of a training college in Sihala, no police training academy has a forensic science research lab.

Moreover, as more than 90 per cent of police officials are unacquainted with provision of Pakistan Penal Code and Criminal Procedure Code, they suffer from the inability to investigate cases in an efficient manner.

Many cases of serious nature are spoiled because of incoherent description in FIRs.

The police rather focus on torture and other inhuman techniques to extract confessions from the accused in clear violation of Articles 3, 4, 14 (inviolability of dignity of man) of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court has also ordered, time and again, closure of torture cells in the country.

Further, corruption is rampant in the administrative domain of the police. Funds are properly allotted for each head in annual budget but shabby condition of patrol vehicles, police stations, charging the complainants for fuel, etc., are loud and clear examples of how budget is misappropriated by police officials

The previoud regime made a half-hearted attempt to reform the police by introducing Police Order 2002, which replaced the archaic Police Act 1861.

Although in eight years this law has been amended many a time, it has failed to reform the police. This shows that legislation alone is not enough to deliver the goods. Political commitments, proper accountability, effective training, viable infrastructure, sophisticated equipment and depoliticisation are all the essence to make the police a service-oriented, honest, professional and public-friendly force.

ALLAH BUX NOONARI
Shikarpur