ISLAMABAD: Police operations and deployment around the boisterous sit-ins at D-Chowk over the past few days have brought back a sense of insecurity and violence to Islamabad citizens.

For the past three nights, Punjab police in riot gear have been checking people at the new pickets set up by Islamabad police on the roads leading to Margalla Road and the Red Zone, and many citizens feel unnerved, particularly after mass arrests of the agitators since Friday.

“Are they back to their old devices,” wondered citizen Asif Khan about the security checks on Sunday as allegations of “police high-handedness” surfaced.

“They (the police) stop boys on motorcycles and in cars and are particularly rude and hostile as the night deepens,” he said.

“They seem out to spread fear and a sense of insecurity.”

Shaban Khalid says he experienced that fear first hand when, driving from F-6 to F-7 on Saturday night, he saw 50 to 60 Punjab and Islamabad policemen shoving people into prison vans at the picket at Daman-i-Koh Chowk. He pulled over to the side to take a photograph of the police manhandling young boys using his mobile phone.

“One of them saw the flash go off. Before I knew it, more than a dozen of them surrounded my car and growled in my face,” a shaken Khalid said, sitting in his battered car with his seat belt latched.

“They threatened to throw me in the prison van with the others and tried to drag me out. Unsuccessful, they vented their frustration on my Mercedes Benz, breaking its windscreen and putting dents in its body with their batons. They also snatched my phone,” he said about the horrifying incident.

His skin was saved only after a member of Islamabad police at the scene realised that the man being manhandled was President of Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry and intervened.

Damage to personal property apart, it is the psychological impact of such incidents on the victims that should worry the authorities.

Murtaza Saeed, an engineer, also felt extremely insecure when, rather than signaling with a flash light, policemen at a checkpoint waved batons to stop his car. “It looked as if they were coming to attack me,” he said.

Except one, senior police officials declined to comment on what Shaban Khalid and others experienced.

“Coercive police force is inherent when certain sections of the law are invoked,” said the exceptional officer of the Islamabad police on the condition of anonymity.

“However, we are looking into reports that have come to us about Punjab policemen resorting to using excessive force and even beating some people.”

Station House Officer Kohsar Police Station Abdul Sattar Shah said: “We have asked the victim (Shaban Khalid) to file a report with the police.”

Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2014