First change the laws and then hearts and minds

Islamabad: When our ‘Colonial Masters’, the representatives of the Great British Empire, finally crushed the resistance by the Mughals and other resistance groups challenging their might and refusing to bow down to be their slaves, they decided to make the criminal and penal laws to regulate life in the subcontinent according to their wishes.

The basic purpose of chalking down those laws was to make the people of the subcontinent the subservient of the British Empire. And if there were any draconian laws to subjugate people on this great mass of land called Indian subcontinent, those were the ones drawn and implemented by the British back in 1860 in the name of Indian Penal Code (IPC).

As if those were not enough, the British Empire introduced the Police Act in 1861 and to further make the Police into a formidable institution to enslave the Indians (at that time) the British introduced the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) in 1898.

Those laws were clearly aimed at invoking ‘Fear of the Crown’ in the hearts and minds of the people of the Indian Subcontinent and the police force was supposed to suppress the people and not to protect or help them.

Unfortunately when Pakistan came into being the government adopted the same laws, rules and acts to control people and never realized that the British made those laws to subjugate people of India and not to protect, help or serve them as the police in Britain is trained.

As a result the same anti-people laws are still implemented in Pakistan in which the police are used to suppress people and not to provide protection, safety and security to them. Not only that, over the last 70 years the police in Pakistan and especially in the province of the Punjab has become a tool in the hands of the rulers, the rich and the powerful. And a sign of terror for the poor and helpless, even if they are innocent!

Over the last five years we have seen both, the police system as well as policing, going through a transformation for the better in the Khyber-Pakhtun-khawa. Everybody heartily lauded the change.

And now it was expected that the KP example of police and policing reforms will be replicated in the Punjab and the Federal Capital territory. However, the initiative taken by the incumbent government of the PTI suffered the stumbling blocks so big that it collapsed before the process could even be initiated when Nasir Khan Durrani, the retired Inspector-General of Police of the KP pardoned himself from being part of the effort.

It is generally believed that one of the main reasons behind the success of the police reforms in the KP was the socio-cultural impact.

Now we have heard over the last few days that the Prime Minister Imran Khan has still not lost all hope and is still trying to introduce police and policing reforms in Punjab.

But we believe that the Prime Minister, despite having lived most part of his life in Lahore, is not aware as to what exactly the Punjab Police is and how it operates.

He should know that the Punjab Police is a ‘sign of terror’ for general public, not only in the rural areas but in the urban as well.

People have lost trust in the police and whenever in trouble the innocent people would not rush to the Police Station to get help but would immediately start looking for a rich, powerful and influential figure who may agree to either accompany them to the police station, or send one of his ‘right-hand man’ with them or at least make a phone call to some highly placed and influential officer in the department to extend some cooperation to them.

All this is being done by the victims and not the criminals. The attitude of the police in the police stations is highly threatening, insulting and derogatory. The first thing that the ‘Moharar’ in the police stations will tell the victims to better forget filing an FIR (First Information Report) to report any crime. And that he will sugar-coat as he would say that it would in their best interests.

And if the complainant may press for filing the FIR, the Punjab Police ‘Moharar’ will not even touch the pen till the time the complainant has not greased his palm.

There were days that the ‘cash handling’ was usually done outside the building, either directly with the complainant or through some middleman. But now this transaction of money is done openly with impunity and without any fear.

“Don’t think that I am going to pocket this money. The share goes right up to the top (the DPO). I get just a fraction of it for helping you,” is the most common phrase repeated umpteen times in the police stations of Punjab.

And this is a never ending ‘tale of sorrows’ as to how general public suffers at the hands of the police, especially in Punjab because the people are docile, too weak to fight back leave alone struggle to get justice.

And no matter what reforms may be introduced it would be next to impossible to change the attitude of the Punjab Police, which has become so used to abuse their powers unashamedly.

What is needed most is to completely re-write our CrPC and the PPC. If that is so difficult then would it be too big a problem this time to borrow the complete policing system, crime fighting, investigations, interrogations and other parameters from the Government of the United Kingdom to replace with what they had left behind for us 70 years ago.

For the low crime rate in the KP and Balochistan provinces, a general argument offered is that if not all, at least majority of people own firearms for self defense. If that may be taken as true, then let everybody, who may wish to, have a weapon to defend themselves in the Punjab as well.

Because, without changing the laws, the CrPC and the PPC and other relevant laws, the things will never change in Punjab and winning the hearts and minds of people can come later.