Extrajudicial killings are becoming a norm in different parts of the country at the hands of both civil and military law enforcement agencies. Aftab Ahmad, the MQM worker who died on May 3 in Sindh Rangers’ custody after two days of detention and severe torture, is the most recent case in point.

There is no consolidated data available either on torture or on extrajudicial killings and for obvious reasons. Law enforcement agencies are said to be preparing region-wise figures but they have not shared anything with the media. Some non-government organisations are also maintaining some region-data wise but there is no collective figure available from them either.

A data sheet based on press clippings compiled by the Karachi chapter of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says that as many as 1211 people were killed in police encounters in the last four and half years. This number increased in 2014 when 457 people were killed in such encounters and 402 in 2015. In the current year, till April, 86 people have reportedly been killed in police shootouts. In 2015, as many as 135 people were killed in encounters with paramilitary forces as compared to 119 in 2014. In 2016, the number so far is 26.

In Punjab, according to an official data sheet, there were 283 police encounters in 2014 in which 276 alleged criminals were killed; 59 were injured and 322 arrested. In 2015, police encounters went up to 394 and the number of alleged criminals who were killed was 457 with 59 injured and 322 nabbed.

In Balochistan, according to HRCP officials in Quetta, there were 37 reported incidents of extrajudicial killings, while as many as 269 distorted dead bodies were recovered from different areas in 2014-15. Scores have been killed in the last two years in military operations against insurgents and terrorists, including those calling for independent Balochistan.

In June 2011, Sarfraz Shah, a young man in his 20s, was shot at in a Karachi public park by Rangers who later died. The anti-terrorist court on Aug 12, 2011 sentenced Shahid Zafar, the Rangers person who had opened fired on Shah, to death. This was the first time that a civilian court in Pakistan sentenced to death a serving member of the military. Later, the Sindh High Court (SHC) also upheld the verdict. The video of the brutal murder of Shah was watched across the world.

Read also: Aftab Ahmed and more

Police officials and analysts believe that under the current criminal justice system, it is impossible to get a hardcore criminal punished. The conviction rate is very slow and appeals remain pending before the courts for years.

Nazish Brohi, a researcher in the social sector, recalls what late Chaudhry Aslam, who headed the police’s Counter Terrorism Department in Karachi and was killed in a suicide attack, said to her. "Every time I arrest one of these killers, I put many lives at risk: my life, the life of my children, my family, police officers working under me, my guards, and their families. And what should I do this for, knowing the court will release him under some pretext or the other, and he’s going to come back for revenge? Come back and hold me responsible for extra-judicial killings and human rights violations once the system is fixed. Till then, you are welcome to your hypocritical moral code," she quotes Aslam.

Police officials may choose to both agree and disagree. "In Pakistan, the system has become almost dysfunctional and there is no attention to overhauling the criminal justice system," says Shoaib Suddle, former police chief of Sindh. "But with such means of violence, we are brutalising the forces and society both."

Suddle thinks there is a need for fundamental restructuring in the process of recruitments, training, investigation of police, and improving the criminal justice system where it is hard to produce witnesses and make different types of evidence admissible.

But there are many dimensions of state violence, including the one that have impacted the province-centre relationship. These are particularly manifest in Sindh and Balochistan. "It has led to the loss of the Baloch trust in state institutions. This breach of trust has also paved way for armed groups and separatists to fill that gap. People now look at the armed groups as their saviours," says Malik Siraj Akbar, a journalist who runs a thinktank -- Balochistan Institute -- in Washington DC.

Akbar says that if the country’s police system and judiciary were capable of preventing extrajudicial killings, the ordinary Baloch would have faith in the state institutions. "Half of problems in Balochistan could have been addressed and the popularity of armed groups contained if our state institutions had the ability to prevent and curb extrajudicial killings. But in Balochistan, the army doesn’t give space to other state institutions like the police and courts."

He says "I don’t think these killings have been effective. The killing of a powerful man like Bugti 10 years ago should have instilled fear among the Baloch people. But it didn’t. The security forces should realise there is no military solution to Balochistan. More extrajudicial killings lead to more reactions, new recruitments for armed groups and hatred toward the federation."

The right to life is enshrined in Article 3 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 3), and Article 9 of Pakistani Constitution. Article 9 of the Constitution of Pakistan provides that "no person shall be deprived of life or liberty save in accordance with law".

Brohi observes that everyone recognises the problem in the criminal justice system spanning the police and the judiciary. "Different institutions have experimented with solutions, for instance the bureaucracy’s notion of magistracy combining executive and judicial powers; the police find extra-judicial killings or beating out a confession a way out; the army decided paramilitary forces and military courts would settle the problem. But these quick fixes are short circuits."

She says an array of verdicts can show that the regular courts are a judicial system, not a justice system. The only way out is institutional re-ordering but no one’s ready to do that and that is why we move from one crisis to another. "For instance there is a sunset clause on military courts, and the judiciary was supposed to use this two year timeframe to fix the problems. What steps have been taken for this? Whether it is caseload, pending cases, time delays, witness protection, judicial anonymity, nothing has been done on any count. There are eight months left. What radical correction will be done in that much time?" she asks.

"People just want the violence to stop, whatever or whoever the cost, so the law enforcement apparatus gets impunity, using the ‘end justifies the means’ argument. The problem is that the old truism still holds true, that violence begets violence," concludes Brohi.