Surviving children of Sahiwal Toll Plaza police encounter

Pakistan today is seized with the terrible, deeply disturbing rape of a young mother by 2 men on a Punjab motorway last week, with people across the nation calling for the public hanging of the rapists. Indeed the culprits need to be apprehended and given exemplary punishment. But is a public hanging the answer? Our Prime Minister and his cabinet seem to think so, with the PM also calling for a bill to be passed for castration and public hanging of all rapists.

The rage and the public discourse seem to be just focusing on a single point – public hanging of the rapists. Even quite educated people and intellectuals are only talking about this. The issue on the other hand has layers of complexity and it is imperative these too need to be addressed.

Any action that one takes, whether in a daily life matter, or in this case, should logically be aiming at achieving certain objectives. If the only objective is to punish the rapists, then I would rather have them serve life in prison till death, in solitary confinement with hard labour, with no visitors and no chance of a parole at any time, suffering every single of their lives till they die. If however an additional objective of a public hanging is to set an example for other potential rapists and thus end rape in Pakistan, then it is extremely naïve thinking that a public hanging will achieve this. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), an incident of rape occurs every two hours in this country. Do your maths to work out the number of rapes per year in Pakistan, and wonder in horror at the number of rapists, in tens of thousands which our society harbours. So can you seriously believe that by publicly hanging these 2 rapists, all others of the ilk will instantly be reformed?

The PM and his government need to examine this increasing rape occurrence in much greater depth. Hanging 2 rapists publicly will only be playing to the gallery of current public emotionalism. So the government passes its bill of castration and public hanging of rapists and then another rape occurs and then another. What then? Have bills or laws ever stopped any crime? In General Zia’s time the kidnapper and the killer of a young boy were publicly executed, with their bodies hanging till sunset. Did the abuse and murder of young boys come to an end, or has it in fact increased since?

Government response to the present case should plan for short (immediate), medium and long-term actions. And then vigorously and committedly follow up on these actions till desired results at least begin to emerge.

Under short-term or immediate actions, obviously apprehending and punishing the culprits is priority one. But it shouldn’t end here. A thorough and impartial investigation to answer a horde of questions that have arisen needs to take place, and again, actions taken to punish all others responsible. For instance, why did the police take 2 hours to respond to the victim’s call? Who passed on her number to the rapists who then called the victim to tell her that help is on the way? When the police identified the culprits, why were their names and photos made public and came all over the media? Isn’t it policing practice all over the world to keep these details secret, so that the culprits are not alerted and can go into hiding? Why is the victim refusing to identify the rapists, as one has heard? Surely this is the only way that the real perpetrators can be punished, and not some proxies put up by the police to close the case. Is she being intimidated or threatened? I am sure there are many other questions that need to be taken up now. Not later.

Under medium and long-term actions, the Government absolutely must now take on the seemingly all-powerful and untouchable Punjab police and carry out a mass public reform campaign. The mindset has to change and it will only change through concerted, sincere and hard effort. Punjab police reforms was one of the priority pre-election promises of Imran Khan. What happened then after coming into power? Last year a 21 year old girl was raped by 3 police officers in Rawalpindi. Whatever happened to this case? Will they also be castrated and hung publicly now?

See the photo at the top of this article. It is of the 3 children who survived when a police party stopped a car at Sahiwal Toll Plaza and open fire, killing in cold blood their parents, an elder sister and one other person on January 17, 2019. The police party first claimed that the family were terrorists and had opened fire on the police party. Investigation proved this to be an outright lie and even no weapons were found in the car which was stationary and not even trying to flee. A video recording by a member of the public present nearby clearly showed what had happened. As usual all sorts of official investigation committees were formed, 7 long months were spent in the investigation, after which the accused were all acquitted, for lack of evidence!

Please pause for a moment and imagine the trauma of these kids when the police party fired on the car and amidst the ear-shattering noise, they heard the anguished, dying screams of their parents and their sister, their bodies spouting blood. Imagine their lives and mental condition since that day. And then we are told that Pakistan will become like riyasat-e-Madina. I wonder if the PM ever gets any nightmares of this huge miscarriage of justice under his watch, or is it just another ‘unfortunate’ case best forgotten, because he and his government just cannot rein in the Punjab police?