RAWALPINDI experienced breakdown of law and order twice in the past three weeks.

Both incidents - the bloody sectarian violence of November 15 and the escape of a murder accused from a prison van on December 2 – brought infamy to the city police and embarrassment to the provincial government.

Last time the garrison city was shaken by religious outrage of comparable scale was on November 22, 1979.

The then military dictator, General Ziaul Haq, was on a bicycle tour of old Rawalpindi to promote austere living and to gain popularity. Suddenly, the mood of the crowds cheering him changed to fury when he broke the news to them that armed men had taken over the Masjid al-Haram in Makkah.

Rumours that the occupiers were Israeli or American agents fueled the crowds’ outrage. They marched on the office of the United States Information Service in the city and burnt it down. Thousands others headed for Islamabad and attacked the US embassy there.

American diplomats inside survived by hiding in a reinforced area, but two American security guards and two Pakistani staff members were killed.

Thirty-four years later, the garrison city again saw bloody religious outrage. On November 15, a mosque-madressah-market complex was attacked and burnt down in the same Raja Bazaar vicinity. Eleven people died in the sectarian violence that took place on the solemn occasion of Ashura.

What emerged as most troubling from the tragedy was that the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of Punjab identified two policemen among the mischief mongers.

Indeed, the Rawalpindi district administration disclosed that the attackers snatched guns from the policemen deployed to guard the madressah, which it considered a vulnerable place.

That amounted to admitting that rouge elements in the police had a hand in the tragedy, and not the ‘foreign elements’ usually blamed for in such cases.

Three SPs, and the regional and city police officers were removed from their posts for the faux pas and a three-member fact-finding committee and a judicial commission were formed to investigate the incident and fix the responsibility.

The fact-finding committee has submitted its findings and suggestions to the Punjab Chief Minister Mian Shahbaz Sharif, but the judicial commission may take months to finish its task.

While still reeling from the criticism of their mishandling of the explosive situation on Ashura day, the city police attracted more opprobrium when armed men ambushed a prison van and fled with a prominent murder accused, Farrukh Khokhar, unchallenged.

According to police, the incident took place on December 2 close to the Adiala Central Jail where Farrukh, his father Imtiaz Khokhar alias Taji Khokhar and other co-accused, were being taken back in a heavily guarded convoy from a court trying them for the murder of a woman, Sabira Bibi, in August 2012 over a land dispute.

But two days later, Farrukh surrendered himself to the police as dramatically as he had escaped.

Farrukh gave himself up after police raided the family’s house and arrested several members. Negotiations followed between the police and Nawaz Khokhar, brother of Taji Khokhar and a former deputy speaker of the National Assembly, and police regained the custody of Farrukh.

It is said police had detained Afzal Khokhar, a former naib nazim, and his son who had just arrived from Canada, to put pressure on the family.

That was also how Taji Khokhar surrendered to the police in July this year – a negotiated deal.

Six police officers, including the station house officer of Airport police station Azhar Hussain Shah, were arrested on the charge of helping Farrukh escape. The city police officer believed that the escape was planned in connivance with the policemen guarding him.

But after Farrukh surrendered, other senior police officers rejected that belief, blaming the escape on “negligence” rather than “connivance”.

Some skeptics even say Farrukh never escaped. It was just a drama staged by the police, probably to help someone settle old political scores with Nawaz Khokhar, who once belonged to the ruling PML-N party.

Police credibility is riddled with questions from careless security provided to the under-trial prisoners to the surrender episode.