THE Lahore High Court is attempting the impossible: ridding police stations of the thana culture. The LHC has asked the Punjab government to ensure that CCTV systems are installed at all police stations in the province in six months.

The direction has been asserted in a detailed judgment by Justice Farrukh Irfan Khan in a case that moved the court for the provision, among other things, of CCTV and other facilities related to public security at public places. The process has to be monitored closely and hence the honourable judge has ordered the preservation of CCTV data in police stations for the next three years.

The government had responded to the petition by coming up with a list of steps it was taking to improve security. The court was told that an Integrated Command and Control Centre was being developed on the lines of the Command and Control Centres of the London Metropolitan Police and (guess what?) the Turkish National Police. The court was also told that the government was taking steps to modernise all police stations to improve ‘thana culture’.

Justice Khan observed that “through the use of technology a thana could be better supervised” and ruled: “These [CCTVs] are to be installed in such a way that areas such as the entrance, corridors, lock-ups and main reception halls are covered at each of the police stations with 24-hour surveillance each day, which is to be recorded in sound and picture form at the police station and the district headquarters levels.”

Civilisation has not quite dulled the basic — by some estimates, the most handy — instinct in the police here.

Justice Khan said that the most important responsibility would be that of the inspector general of Punjab Police, who must ensure that each camera was functioning at every police station and record was maintained at least for three years, both at the police station and district headquarters.

That process, with all its promised transparency, can wait. For the moment, the Lahore police are bent upon proving that they, as their counterparts in other parts of the country, are fully deserving of a scrutiny and the censure that they have so far been subjected to all too occasionally.

There are dark corners where the thana culture is nurtured with all its brutal and sadistic aspects. Just as a corridor of torture is unearthed and a rescue mission to a lock-up is accomplished, a new spot away from the gaze of the law and people is found to perpetuate violence in the name of investigation and justice.

The names change but often the details are eerily similar — speaking of the consistency of the police methods and, unfortunately, the unwavering determination and belief with which these old, violent models continue to be pursued. And as ever, it needs a combination of various factors for an incident of police torture to emerge in public view. Like all brutal and ultimately naive wielders of authority, the police are confident that they can escape probe and punishment — typically, by threatening more torture.

This one was discovered, by chance, only a day or two after the detailed judgment about monitoring the thanas by cameras was reported in the papers. The residents of a locality in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat area came around asking for help to get a middle-aged man treated for his injuries. They must have considered the wounds serious enough to not rely on the hush-hush treatment which is routinely provided by quacks and some of their more decorated colleagues in the medical profession. They — the neighbours of the man in need of some urgent care — wanted him taken to a public-sector hospital. The wounds eventually betrayed what was being concealed and the incident was exposed.

The gentleman, a sherbet seller and the father of five daughters and three sons, was picked up by the police — in plainclothes, it is said — and taken to the thana. Allegedly, the man was kept there for three days and was severely tortured. A check-up later revealed that he had a 70-centimetre-wide torture mark confirming that civilisation had not quite dulled the basic — by some estimates, the most handy — instinct in the police here.

And to counter the likelihood of these visible wounds yielding to concern and care, there were even more serious allegations. It was said that this middle-aged man had endured sexual assaults during captivity, meaning that he could require a more complicated, prolonged psychological treatment to regain some normality.

The police had their own fall guys once the story got into the media and it became necessary to acknowledge that somewhere, some excesses had been committed. In the years gone by and even today, the norm is for a senior police official to blame his juniors or in our starkest encounters with truth, for a minister to blame a top-ranking police officer. But since there has been some reform, it is now possible for one arm of the police to point the accusing finger at another without too many apparent qualms. In this case, too, the policemen (of the operations wing) were not too shy in identifying the policemen (belonging to the investigation wing) as the extremely likely — and very usual — suspects.

Since there are so many dark corners still to be lit up and monitored, the cameras that are to be installed on the orders of the LHC will be useful if they are a symbol of the changing idiom, of an urge in society to be more vigilant about injustices around it. They must lead to awareness and protest and resistance, the kind of fighting qualities displayed by the neighbours of this brave, tortured man of Kot Lakhpat. In the face of police pressure to keep quiet, it was these friends that gave him the courage to speak up. Otherwise, the case would have gone unreported.

Just in case you all are wondering, this sherbet-seller was suspected of buying a stolen mobile phone.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, August 7th, 2015

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