PESHAWAR: At a time when everyone is talking to reform the police to avoid Sahiwal and Loralai-like incidents in future, nobody has paid any heed to the arrests of thousands of innocent people in the so-called search operations, snap checking and other actions.
There are also a number of complaints about implicating innocent people by claiming recovery of a few grams of hashish or licensed weapon only to show increased number of cases and recovery to the bosses during regular policing. This useless practice has ruined the lives of a large number of people in every district.
Though most of those arrested during the search and strike operations are released within a few hours for being innocent, the practice of humiliation of commoners during these raids, entering their houses and even bedrooms, sending them behind bars and even slapping and dragging them in public goes on almost daily. There have been demands since long that instead of search and strike operations, the bosses of the force should go for intelligence-based operations against the terrorists. These IBOs have helped arrest a number of terrorists and facilitators across the province.
The top police bosses, however, encourage the practice of search and strike operations and snap checking by either appreciating the officers supervising these actions or by just keeping silence on such large number of arrests of innocent people. Many of these officers even criticised media for taking up the issue of arrests during the search operations, saying this is being done to improve the law and order. It is believed that some police officers encourage the arrest of large number of innocent people only to oblige the local elected members and elders by releasing them on their guarantee. However, the cops do not realize how it is damaging the reputation of the force. It remains to be seen whether the new inspector general of police Dr Mohammad Naeem Khan will reduce the number of search operations and snap checking and stop other illegal arrests so that the innocent civilians could heave a sigh of relief.
Even significant reduction in operations which so far could not provide any better results could provide relief to the commoners. For that purpose, the RPOs and DPOs will have to be given a new strategy for friendly policing towards public and aggressive targeted actions against terrorists and criminals. Many argue that the image of the force cannot be improved by launching initiatives like the Police Access Service, Police Assistance Lines and Dispute Resolution Councils unless it stops misusing its powers. \The arrests of innocent people aimed at increasing the number of FIRs and show a bigger number of arrests to the bosses is damaging the reputation of the KP Police, which the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government has claimed to be the most reformed force. “The official figures compiled by the Central Police Office in Peshawar claim the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police had arrested 9893 ‘suspects’ during 15 days in January 2019. A total of 794 search and strike operations and snap checking at over 4700 points were carried out during the two weeks. Many will still want to know as to how many of these ‘suspects’ were terrorists, their facilitators or even hardened criminals,” a source questioned.More than 311,900 ‘suspects’ were rounded up in over 25,000 search and strike operations and around 110,000 snap checking in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa during 2015 and 2016. As many as 46,110 suspects were arrested in 6,497 search and strike operations all over the province during the first five months of 2018. These figures do not include those arrested in other actions and raids by the police.
Some sources informed that majority of those detained had to be released the next day since they were not terrorists or criminals and police could not prove anything against them. “What the police force is trying to establish with such large number of arrests. If the figures of the past years are checked, the KP Police have arrested roughly over 500,000 of suspects in search operations and snap checking and everyone is sure that except a few the rest were innocent. These figures do not show the number of those humiliated, slapped or dragged during these actions,” the source said.
The source added that people do not complain or approach any high-ups as they try to justify the actions to improve law and order and diminish threats to the public.
Some police officers while taking care of the welfare of the public have already directed the cops to treat innocent people with respect during actions.
A regional police officer recently stopped his subordinates from registering the first information reports about the recovering of 89 and 94 grams of hashish and lodging cases about licensed weapons inside the house. The policemen are strictly directed not to enter the bedrooms or the house of anyone during the late night operations and even if it is needed they must be accompanied by the policewomen.
Some other RPOs and DPOs have also taken actions. The same directives are needed in other districts and regions of the province to bridge the widening gap between the public and police.
