Right lessons

The murder of Sardar Soran Singh, who was an advisor to KP Chief Minister Pervaiz Khattak on minority affairs, was initially portrayed as yet another example of the intolerance that has darkened this land – with comparisons drawn to the killing of Shahbaz Bhatti in 2011. It didn’t help that the TTP immediately claimed credit for the attack. Now we know that this was not the case. The KP police arrested six people in connection with the murder, one of whom is fellow PTI minority member Baldev Kumar. Kumar hired hit men to murder Singh after having been denied a party ticket that instead went to Singh. The cell phone data and confessions of the hit men point to this being an intra-party dispute. Evidently, there are lessons to be learned from this episode. The first is that the media needs to rein in its instinct to speculate and jump to conclusions. While it is understandable that militancy would be assumed to be a likely explanation whenever an act of political violence is carried out – especially against a minority or its member – we should investigate the matter thoroughly and wait for confirmation before fully accepting a particular line.

The media will also have to be more wary about accepting at face value whatever statements are put out by the various militant groups operating in the country. These groups have an obvious incentive to claim credit for every attack. It makes them appear omnipotent and gives them an importance they don’t quite merit. An additional problem is that it lets law-enforcement authorities off the hook for their job – investigation. In this case, the KP police did an admirable job in quickly tracking down the likely culprits but we do not know how many times before investigations have simply stopped because a militant group has claimed an attack. On the flip side, we should not use this one exception to peddle a narrative that downplays the fact that our minorities are targeted very often for their beliefs. Singh was murdered in a political dispute but that our first instinct was to blame religious hatred says a lot about the Pakistan of today.