FAISALABAD: People of different areas are up in arms about police operations without search warrants and the alleged misbehaviour with women during raids at midnight.
Residents of Chak 616-GB, Tandlianwala, said police entered their houses at midnight on Oct 3 by scaling the walls [like the robbers did] and started shouting and waking up women, children and men who were asleep. They said policemen did not have search warrants when they entered the houses of the entire village.
“We kept asking the policemen on what ground they are misbehaving with their family members and how they determined that the entire village comprises criminals,” one of the residents said.
He said a man came from Malaysia a couple of days ago and he was implicated in a case of possessing an illegal weapon. Similarly, about a dozen others were also implicated in cases of possessing illegal arms. The policemen also [allegedly] thrashed some of the men who resisted privacy violation of their houses.
Ali Hassan, a local TV channel reporter of Kanjwani, said the policemen encircled the entire village [on Oct 3], entered the houses by scaling the outer walls and allegedly misbehaved with women who were asleep at that time. He said majority of dwellers of the village had nothing to do with crimes, however, police dealt with them like criminals. He said police searched each and every house by forcibly bringing members of families out of their homes.
He claimed that the policemen searched each and every corner of the houses including cupboards, kitchens and rooms.
A resident said a policeman also forgot his shirt and a belt at a house where he allegedly tortured the house inmates.
People have appealed to the chief minister to launch a probe into the issue [that on what grounds people are being disgraced].
Search operations have been under way in Faisalabad for a couple of days. On Sunday night, police said it had carried out a search operation at Chak-44 JB Pakka Dalla, in the remit of Sahiyanwala police. Police said house-to-house search was conducted and it succeeded to nab one dozen suspects coupled with recovery of 15 guns, including a Kalashnikov.
Requesting anonymity, some of the policemen said they had never seen any major developments like arrests of hardened criminals in such raids. They said this approach would land the respective policemen in trouble when the villagers, whose houses were trespassed, would file writ petitions.
“Policemen have to show some recoveries [for performance] to their high-ups in case of no development,” an official said.
Police have no standard operating procedure (SOP) to launch the search operations, he admitted and said: “We must refrain from this decades-old practice and try to launch intelligence-based operations.”
Another police official said the search operations had been started only to create fear among the criminals. He said such operations would create a sense of security among commoners who would definitely appreciate that the police officials were active to protect their lives and properties.
He admitted that no search warrant had been obtained from any court of law “as it’s a cumbersome process and the court wouldn’t issue any warrant to search the entire village.”
After a couple of days, he claimed that people would feel relief as “we are adopting a zero-tolerance policy for criminals, however, we are trying to protect the sanctity of women and privacy of houses.”
Published in Dawn, October 7th, 2020