Pakistani police culture of ‘encounter’ is severely becoming a threat to society. In a recent Heart-wrenching incident, Millat Town Faisalabad police allegedly killed two matriculation students in an “encounter” last week, claiming that both opened fire during a chase where Police registered an encounter case against the boys under sections 186, 324, 365 and 13/20/65. As per the FIR, a police team signalled the boys to stop near Kalash Road, however, they sped away. During a chase, the suspects fired on the police team. The suspects were killed in retaliation. Not a single policeman sustained even a minor injury during the ‘crossfire’.
But shockingly, initial inquiry report confirmed the ‘encounter’ as ‘fake encounter’ the City Police Officer Faisalabad told that the two young boys shot dead in police firing were not dacoits and no evidence was found of the duo opening fire upon the policemen. He added that the two boys named Arsalan and Usman had no criminal record and both were innocent, both were the students and got good marks in recent examination of matriculation While raids are underway to arrest the involved policemen and they will be arrested soon.
It is not the first incident in the country that innocent citizens lost their lives in a fake police encounter; it is a routine that police had been killing citizens at pickets and we are in a scenario of on-the-spot execution. The Police in Pakistan are routinely busy in the easy option of staging encounters to hide the missing parts of their investigation. It would be an exaggeration that such incidents are rapidly eradicating the impression that the main purpose of policemen is to guard citizens and give them a sense of security.
It is also a question mark on the efficiency of the human rights ministry having a deep silence on such incidents, may it does take notice of excesses by government functionaries, including those carried out by the police but it has yet to come up with any short-term model let alone a proper system to question and curb the tendency of policemen to act as on-the-spot executioners. In the absence of an authority empowered to deal with the menace many other will find themselves at the mercy of the law enforcers.
Police are routinely active in the easy option of staging encounters to hide missing parts of investigation