The job of the police ends when they arrest someone and put him in jail. After that, there are courts who, follow a due process, decide the quantum of crime and award the needed punishment. However, in Pakistan, the police act as the jury, the judge and the brutal executioner. Pakistanis are so used to the brutalities of those in power that they don’t even feel the need for a due process.
This is standard operating procedure of investigation: beat beat and beat some more till the convict is ready to sing like a canary. Unlike Western police who rely more on scientific and forensic evidences, these are the only tool of trade which are available to our ill groomed Police, and everyone from CJP to munsif judge is aware of it.
How can they not, when confessions extracted under unbearable beatings helps crack open seemingly untraceable cases and evidence collected this way and confessions extracted, forms the bedrock of criminal conviction in Pakistani institutions.
This incident is a typical case how ordinary people are treated by police for petty crimes, and where as corrupt and convicted politicians are treated like a VIP prisoners. Indicating double standards for rich and ordinary people, who are treated like second class citizens?
It’s nothing but a blatant murder of an individual as I’d evident from the statement of the chief doctor of the hospital that “he cannot comment on the condition of Salahudin, he was brought in”. Just this statement speaks volumes, Salahudin had allegedly committed a crime. Should have been prosecuted & punished, if proven guilty, not murdered.
This must be treated as a Custodial death. As per law of statics, it has to do with what happened in police custody. Looking at descriptions of sections 411, 427, 454 & 380 of penal code applied to the deceased, one gets bewildered to know that none of this 18th century penal code sections corresponds to the committed crime. One gets flabbergasted that with this colonial era criminal code in vogue, how does our police deals with criminal cases of 21st century which finds no mention in their code? This is the reason that most of our white collar crimes are being dragged on endlessly in court proceeding which eventually result in acquittals of such criminal. In most of these cases, the culprits whether caught red handed or otherwise are tortured inhumanly to obtain a confession.
Realistically speaking, we urgently need police reforms which apart from including a complete rewriting of penal code, must also focus upon training our cops on modern techniques of criminal interrogations as well forensic investigation process, unfortunately remaining in the back burner for all practical reasons.
