Vigilante (in)justice?

In a country where governance is at its lowest ebb and justice nowhere in sight, rising cases of citizens taking law into their own hands show the intensity of pent up aggression within the people. Recent reports from Faisalabad reveal the registering of an FIR by Sargodha Road Police against 100 people for attacking police officials who tried to rescue two robbery suspects that a mob was beating on Sunday.
If one reads between the lines again, the irony cannot be missed by anybody: Police officials rescuing robbers. The complete lack of trust and faith in the police's ability to perform their tasks dutifully leaves the ordinary citizens with no choice but to unleash their simmering aggression, whenever they get hold of (unlucky) criminals caught while attempting a crime.
First, it needs to be understood why people resort to handing out vigilante justice, of the most brutal kind, instead of handing over the criminals to the law enforcement agencies. In the recent past, there have been numerous incidents where the public caught criminals and beat them to the pulp and, in at least three brazen cases, lynched them. The first of those took place in May 2010, when three robbers, while trying to commit a robbery in the Timber Market area in Karachi, were caught by the public. According to local news reports, around 1,000 people gathered at the scene, beat the alleged robbers and then torched them alive.
The police officials and Edhi workers who tried to save the victims were also pushed back and beaten. The residents of the area also expressed their happiness at the lynching and said: "what the people achieved was justice because had the bandits been arrested, they would have been granted bail by the courts and would have resumed looting." This was not an isolated incident. Merely days later, a replay of the same incident was enacted in Lyari area of Karachi where this time, two robbers met their harrowing fate with the police merely as bystanders. The most notorious of all, however, was the case of the brothers in Sialkot, who were beaten to death upon the allegation of committing a robbery. Moiz and Muneeb, both teenagers, were beaten savagely by a crowd, which was baying lustily for their blood. As the video of the entire incident was later revealed on national media, it showed the barbaric nature of the crime and the inability of police and local authorities to control it.
In all the above mentioned cases, and a plethora of those which took place over the course of last three years, public sentiment has always been to blame the police for letting the accused go scot-free. In fact, in another incident in Karachi, the public ripped apart a police station for releasing alleged criminals. All of these cases and many more across the country betray a gross lack of trust in the prosecution abilities of the police and the judicial system, which takes ages to bring a culprit to justice. The public is right to question why the police and judiciary fail to perform their tasks admirably and efficiently. The kind of suppressed environment in which one has to live in Pakistan and a non-existent faith in finding justice, the violent reaction, though unjustified, is all too obvious.
Sadly, none of this has forced the authorities to wake up and smell the coffee. It is easy to pass the buck to various elements such as the corrupt police, lack of proof, faulty prosecution methods, backlog of cases in courts, all of them contribute to the sense of disillusionment within the masses, which in turn become raving savages and create havoc by taking the law in their hands. The citizens cite lack of prosecution against captured criminals and claim that the slow process of handing out justice only helps in accentuating the helplessness and frustration.
In the light of these and the latest case in Faisalabad, it is extremely important for the authorities to look into the law again and modify it to help the innocent. First of all, police reforms are most urgent as until and unless the public does not start trusting the police, such incidences will continue to rear their ugly head. Furthermore, prosecution methods and judicial reforms are also necessary in the light of the slow pace to resolve crimes and hand out justice. For all the anxiety and impatience shown by the general public, if the authorities show sincerity into their efforts to placate the intense public anger and make sure the criminals are sufficiently punished, we will never have to read another ironic news report where police officials rescue petty thieves.